How Fake News Becomes Fake History: British Propaganda and World War 1
By Corey Schink | Sott.net | April 2, 2018
While it took a while to pick up steam, the Skripal Salisbury poisoning incident has lately dominated Western media headlines. Daily we are treated to the smug and self-righteous faces who, in one breath, compare Putin to Hitler, Stalin, and Czar Nicholas II, before proceeding to compare Russia to Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire simultaneously. This would surely be the height of all evil, assuming it were true!
And of course we are supposed to assume it is true because this latest fake news is built on an edifice of an entire history of fake news. Simon Tisdall recently wrote in one of the largest purveyors of fake news, The Guardian:
It has taken a long time for western politicians to recognise the extent and depth of the threat represented by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Some in the Labour party still don’t. It is also plain, as Theresa May embarks on an open-ended confrontation with Moscow, that the dispute provoked by the Salisbury outrage could take years to resolve.
Cold or hot, overt or covert, this is going to be a long war – and Britain will need all its friends and allies if it is to prevail against a ruthless opponent. Whether sincere, sufficient and timely support will be forthcoming is in serious doubt.
The ‘war’ has been declared – and to dissent is to be a traitor, not so much to one’s country but to amorphous ‘Western values’. Tisdall continues:
Justified perceptions of Western weakness, ambivalence and division have since encouraged Putin in a pattern of escalating, aggressive behaviour. Its main features include wars in Georgia and Ukraine, cyber-attacks against Nato countries, election meddling and destabilisation operations, and the bloody Syrian intervention.
Putin was further emboldened by his domestic dominance, achieved through manipulation of elections, the rustication of the Duma into a rubber-stamp parliament, and the elimination, by various means, of leading opponents, critics and free media. Boris Nemtsov, a liberal reformer killed in 2015, and Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist murdered in 2006, are but two names on a long list that could ultimately include Sergei and Yulia Skripal.
Unsubstantiated claims apparently add up to substantial threats which warrant immediate action. To paraphrase Franz Kafka, “It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary – thus lying turns into a universal principle.” I would only add that believing in lies turns people’s brains to mush, rendering them easily exploited by the liars.
So we watch again as many Western governments expel large numbers of Russian diplomats with absolute disregard for international law and norms. Donald Trump, the man who promised to mend relations with Russia has succumbed to the ‘swamp’ that he set out to drain. We can hope that he has now, at least, discovered how naive he was to believe he could actually do it.
While uniquely shrill and apparently novel, the anti-Russia hysteria in recent years – culminating recently with the Skripal incident and ‘Russiagate’ – has a long historical precedent and, over the course of at least the last couple of centuries, has been used primarily for one thing: war. War distracts the people from apparently insoluble social and political issues, and it presents major opportunities for enrichment to those positioned for it. But it takes two to tango, and ‘the East’ has learned that there will be no war if they don’t show up. While ‘the West’ continues to play a game of deception, the East has moved on, and we Westerners are – for now at least – left only to war with ourselves.
The central role played by the UK in recent ‘Russian incidents’ echoes the central role that country played in historical incidents which led us to this moment today. For over a century now, the role of the British elite in starting World War 1 has been almost completely overlooked. A proper appraisal of that world-changing event, which shaped the rest of the 20th century and our world today, has only recently been undertaken by historians and researchers. Far from being exclusively Germany’s fault, the ‘war to end all wars’ was deliberately brought about by a network of corporate, financial and imperial interests that met in and operated through the seat of the British Empire.
List of Suspects
Lord Alfred Milner, British Colonial Secretary, and architect of the Union of South Africa
Britain in the early 1900s underwent a gradual though sustained period of anti-German hystericization which culminated in the outbreak of WW1. Despite relentless media propaganda demonizing Germans and increasing signs that war could break out in Europe, the British public in 1906 voted overwhelmingly for a new Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, a staunch critic of the recent Boer wars and an advocate for a policy of ‘Peace and Retrenchment’ in the increasingly fragile British Empire.
Referred to as “Britain’s first, and only, radical Prime Minister,” in foreign affairs Campbell-Bannerman was neutered by a warmongering elite before he even began his term, and he died in office just two years later. Instead of peace, the British public received a war that produced in a single day the combined military and civilian casualties in all of Europe’s conflicts from the previous 100 years.1 So much for democracy and highfalutin ‘Western values’.
While the British voted resoundingly for a policy of Peace and Retrenchment, powerful forces would stop at nothing to get the war they desired, and the control over the world it afforded them.
Lord Alfred Milner: Despite being born in Germany to mixed British-German parents, Milner’s ethos was formed entirely by an ardent belief in the “superiority of the British race.” An Oxford-educated imperialist, Milner began as a journalist at the Pall Mall Gazette before joining, together with fellow journalist William Stead, a secret society set up by the influential oligarch and colonialist Cecil Rhodes. By the time WW1 broke out, this sinister organization was entirely Milner’s, and went by the name ‘Round Table Group’, or ‘Milner’s Kindergarten’, influencing British, and thus global, foreign policy from the shadows. It was, in essence, the precursor to today’s ‘Deep State’.
Milner served as Rhodes’ ‘clean-up man’ following the disastrous attempt to provoke an uprising among British expatriates in the Transvaal colony of southern Africa. Soon after Milner was rewarded with the office of High Commissioner for Southern Africa in 1897. From that post Milner would wage a campaign of deception to initiate the second Boer war, overseeing the highly controversial use of concentration camps to humiliate and punish the citizenry. These camps and other brutal methods used in the Boer wars would shock both the British public and the armed forces. Under Milner’s rule, 28,000 of the 115,000 people put into camps died, nearly 22,000 of them children. On this Milner wrote,
“The theory that, all the weakly children being dead, the rate would fall off is not so far borne out by the facts. The strong ones must be dying now and they will all be dead by the spring of 1903.”
Perhaps no one exemplified the British Elite’s attitude better than Milner. But for all his barbarism, he was very successful. Having secured British territories in the ‘Scramble for Africa’, Milner carefully manipulated the cabinet of the newly elected Henry Campbell-Bannerman, ensuring that his pro-imperialist forces were well-represented within. Succeeding in the dark arts of imperialism, Milner turned down lucrative offers to work for JP Morgan and instead returned to London in 1905 to pursue a much larger project: conquering the globe.2
Sir Edward Grey was appointed Foreign Minister in Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s cabinet on the insistence of King Edward. One of Milner’s inside men, he ensured that British foreign policy was pointed towards war preparations, and was party to a secret military alliance with France in 1904. This secret agreement between five ministers – Asquith, Haldane, Grey, Churchill and Lloyd George – promised military ‘reciprocities’ to the French in the event of war.
Grey stated categorically that there had been no ‘secret agreement’ to come to France’s aid in case of attack:
“First of all let me try to put an end to some of the suspicions with regard to secrecy — suspicions with which it seems to me some people are torturing themselves, and certainly worrying others. We have laid before the House the Secret Articles of the Agreement with France of 1904. There are no other secret engagements. The late Government made that agreement in 1904. They kept those articles secret and I think to everybody the reason will be obvious why they did so. It would have been invidious to make those articles public. In my opinion they were entirely justified in keeping those articles secret because they were not articles which commit this House to serious obligations.3
But, as Sir Bertrand Russell noted at the time, “I had noticed during previous years how carefully Sir Edward Grey lied in order to prevent the public from knowing the methods by which he was committing us to the support of France in the event of war.”4
King Edward VII: Prince of Wales, Albert Edward, became King Edward VII upon taking the throne in 1901. In the following years he busied himself with diplomatic meetings to arrange secret agreements that effectively encircled Germany and made the German military paranoid.
He drove a wedge between Germany and the Italian monarch, and conducted diplomacy with nearly all of Germany’s neighbors. When Germany mobilized her forces, she was unwittingly springing the trap set for her by Edward and the secret elite.
Raymond Poincaré: A French statesman, three-time Prime Minister and President in 1913, Poincare exemplified the hysterical anti-German hatred of the French elite. France, which lost the territory of Alsace-Lorraine to Prussia after Napoleon III foolishly went to war with an insufficient army to win it, was prepared to do whatever it took to win it back and check Germany’s rise. As Poincare would announce in an address to university students,
“In my years at school, my thought, bowed before the spectre of defeat, dwelt ceaselessly upon the frontier which the Treaty of Frankfurt had imposed upon us, and when I descended from my metaphysical clouds, I could discover no other reason why my generation should go on living except for the hope of recovering our lost provinces.”
Richard Burdon Haldane: Haldane was one of Milner’s closest confidants, and would become the Secretary of State for War in 1905, instituting a massive military revolution in the organisation of the British Army. He set up the Territorial Army, the Office Training Corps, and the Special Reserve, and spearhead a pro-French military policy in opposition to many who had served under a pro-Belgian policy for decades.
Théophile Delcassé: A French foreign minister with a rabid hatred of Germany, Théophile was bent on establishing a military alliance between Britain, France and Russia that would support France’s desire to regain her lost territories. He was forced to resign after he nearly brought his country to the brink of war with Germany in the First Moroccan Crisis of 1905-1906. However, he wormed his way back into power to replace the more cool-headed foreign minister, Gabriel Hanotaux, and then became President of France in 1913.
Horatio Herbert Kitchener
Horatio Herbert Kitchener: A general during the Boer wars, Kitchener oversaw the implementation of concentration camp policy in South Africa. He then ran British foreign affairs out of Cairo and designed plans for the division of the Middle East, fanning the flames of rebellion and separatism in the Ottoman Empire. The end result (though not according to his plan) was the rise of the House of Saud and its peculiar brand of Islam that served Anglo-American dominance of the region via the ‘War on Terror’ a century later. David Fromkin noted in A Peace to End All Peace that:
Restoring the caliphate to Arabia, where it and Mohammed were born thirteen centuries before, was Kitchener’s strategy for preparing for the rivalry with Russia which was bound to follow the conclusion of the war against Germany.5
If that was indeed Kitchener’s strategy a century ago, then it is remarkably consistent with current Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia’s recent statement that Wahhabism was encouraged throughout the 20th century by the anglo-Americans as a means of keeping Russia out of the Middle East.
Kitchener, like all the upper-class aristocrats and oligarchs who engineered WW1, had stunning disdain for ordinary people, his own troops included. At one point early in World War 1, it looked like the Russians were going to pull out and make peace with Germany. This would have been disastrous for the Anglo-French forces because Germany could then concentrate its forces on the Western Front.
The secret elite promised Russia that, in exchange for joining Britain’s ‘Triple Entente’, Constantinople – a kind of Orthodox Mecca – would become Russian property in a post-war world. Kitchener conspired with Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, to arrange a suicidal assault on the Dardanelles, which links the Mediterranean and Black Seas. They did this in order to trick Russia into believing that Britain was upholding its end of the bargain, and thus continuing its military engagement with Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire in eastern Europe. This worked, but at the cost of tens of thousands of British, French and Australian lives in a landing invasion the elite knew would not work against formidable Ottoman defences. Furthermore, they never had any intention of ceding Constantinople to Russia.
The iconic, much-imitated 1914 Lord Kitchener Wants You poster
Kitchener’s death-dealing career hit its highest point when he was appointed Secretary of State for War, but was abruptly ended when his ship was hit by a German u-boat, although there are various other theories about the cause of his death.
This list covers just a few of the conspirators, but enough to paint a rough picture of the individuals who worked tirelessly to engineer a war that would end peace for much of the century – a war that would result in the rise of Hitler, the Soviet Union, an apartheid Israeli state, and the spread of Radical Islamic Terrorism. The following is the general strategy they followed.
Seeking the War Trigger
Scottish researchers Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor conducted an exhaustive study of the ways in which British officials paved the road to war in their book Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War. I think it’s a must-read for any student of Western history, but my one criticism of their work is that they tend to portray Germany as a victim and thereby cast a shadow over the generalized hysteria – which affected everyone, Russia included – and poor thinking that the German military and Kaiser succumbed to – and indeed the war crimes committed by the Germans. Nevertheless, their argument that the British were the primary instigators of the war rests in part on the following cases:
Cracks in the British Empire: At the onset of the war it seemed that every nation except Germany had reason to engage in a global Holocaust. The English had dominated European and world affairs to that point, but the sheer cost of occupying and managing many far-flung colonies was hitting its national coffers hard. Germany’s unification under Bismarck and rapid industrialization, meanwhile, was leading it to overtake the British empire in some key sectors. As F. William Engdahl notes “fear of the emerging German economic challenge towards the end of the 1890s was so extreme among the leading circles of the British establishment, that Britain made a drastic change in its decades-long Continental alliance strategy, in a bold effort to tilt European events back to England’s advantage.”6
This change in strategy saw Britain make geopolitical concessions to both Russia and France while manipulating them into adopting antagonistic positions towards Germany. Having been engaged in ‘the Great Game’ with Russia throughout the 19th century to check Russian expansion and influence in India and Afghanistan, Britain’s sudden alliance with Russia only came about after Japan, armed with British battleships and financed by British and American banks, defeated Russia in its Far East region in 1904-1905. Contained in the east by the rising Japanese, Russia’s gaze inevitably swung westwards to the Balkans and to the Mediterranean Sea access she coveted, and which the British pretended to agree she could have.
French Hysteria: Napoleon III, the nephew of Napoleon, was as ambitious as his uncle. In a brash attempt to destroy the growing Prussian state, Napoleon III ordered the mobilization of a far inferior French force that was immediately crushed by the Prussian military machine. As a result, France lost Alsace-Lorraine and was humiliated due to the ridiculous actions of a reckless leader.
As a British newspaper, the Sheffield and Rotterdam Independent, noted on October 11, 1870, “France has ever coveted the boundary of 1810. She has wanted power to cross the Rhine at her pleasure, to set up a Rhenish Confederation under her control, and to occupy at her convenience, as the first Napoleon did, the German capitals.”
The Dreyfuss Affair: Gabriel Hanotaux, French minister of foreign affairs from 1894 to 1896, was a notable exception in the general trend of increasing hysteria. His efforts, however, could not arrest the slide to war. When Hanotaux sought to develop peaceful relations with Germany, General Albert Dreyfuss was charged with treason for allegedly communicating secrets to German spies. He was later exhonerated and the case remained a symbol of trial-by-propaganda. As Engdahl writes:
Hanotaux intervened into the initial process in 1894, correctly warning that the Dreyfus affair would lead to “a diplomatic rupture with Germany, even war.” Dreyfus was exonerated years later, and it was revealed that Count Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy, in the pay of the Rothschild banking family, had manufactured the evidence against Dreyfus. By 1898, Hanotaux was out of office, and succeeded by the malleable anglophile, Theophile Delcassé.7
Fashoda Incident: In 1898 a military incident between Kitchener’s British forces and French forces in Egypt, dubbed the Fashoda Incident, forced the French out of that country and caused an international crisis. The British then exploited the situation to secure a future alliance with France lest she be cornered by Germany and Russia and lose control of her other territories. By 1904 the British had secretly arranged to take complete control of Egypt while giving France control of Morocco, which was in violation of Franco-German treaties.
Fake News
Emperor Wilhelm II and an Italian poster from 1915 showing the Kaiser biting into the world
Fake news becomes fake history. Today British war-mongers expect us to believe, without any reasonable proof, that Putin will kill ‘thousands and thousands and thousands’ of Britons without provocation. Similarly, the propaganda mill before and during World War 1 was hard at work convincing the world that Germany was the devil incarnate – and that the coming bloodbath was justified.
Germany was consistently portrayed in the press as an ‘aggressor nation’. This despite the fact that the UK, France, and Russia “spent £657,884,476 on warships in that same decade, while Germany and Austria-Hungary spent £235,897,978. The peacetime strength of the German army was 761,000, while France stood at 794,000 and Russia 1,845,000, yet the claim that militarism had ‘run amok’ in Germany was presented as the given truth.”9
While accusing Germany of war-mongering, British preparations for war were so intense that it led senior military officers to claim that war with Germany was inevitable.10 Milner would go on a ‘world tour’ organizing imperial conferences designed to rally support for Britain in the event of war and to “foster imperial cooperation in both defence and communications.”11
In 1896 Lord Nortchliffe created the Daily Mail newspaper which, within years, had reached millions of mostly lower and middle-class readers.12 In 1897 he commissioned the publication of a series titled Under the Iron Heel, which predicted the German Army would soon invade Britain. Northcliffe also commissioned the writing of a fictional account of a German invasion called The Invasion of 1910. The Daily Mail even printed special maps showing where these ‘Huns’ (slang for Germans) would invade. Northcliffe was also a financier of The Poison Bullet, a spy scare novel designed to indulge base anti-German sentiment among the British public.13 He also penned pamphlets predicting inevitable war with Germany.
As J. Lee Thompson writes, “by 1914 Northcliffe controlled roughly 40 percent of the morning, 45 percent of the evening, and 15 percent of the Sunday total newspaper circulations.”14 Thus, by the time of war, British society had been effectively whipped into war-readiness by decades of anti-German propaganda, with pamphlets and literature convincing the public that German spies were around every corner. Today the evening news and the internet have replaced “pamphlets and literature” and Russia has replaced Germany.
In 1909 a bill was rammed through parliament establishing the British secret service – today’s MI5 and MI6 – while another imposed unprecedented police state powers on the country.15
Pulling the Trigger
With Germany diplomatically isolated and secret military preparations and agreements signed by France, Britain, and Russia, the only thing missing was a “catastrophic and catalyzing event” to justify a declaration of war. Just such an event occurred in the Balkans, a region that had been in utter turmoil for some years.
In the build-up to World War 1, Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Bosnia were at war with each other, divided internally, and in conflict with both the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Bitter ethnic and nationalist sentiment was whipped into a frenzy by successive crises. Anglophile Russian diplomat Alexander Isvolsky agreed (without the Czar’s or the Russian government’s approval) that Russia would support Austria-Hungary’s ‘right’ to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina at a time of its choosing in exhange for Austro-Hungarian support for Russian control over the Dardanelles. As a result, and in violation of international law, on October 6, 1908, Austria-Hungary announced its annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina immediately provoking outrage from Serbia that saw Bosnia as theirs. This entanglement was the fuse that ignited the first World War when the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated by a Bosnian Serb. As Alan Cassels wrote in his Ideology and International Relations in the Modern World, this event “fanned pan-Slavism in the Balkans to a frenzy.”17
When World War I broke out, Isvolsky is reputed to have remarked, “C’est ma guerre!” (“This is my war!”)
On June 28th, 1914 Archduke Ferdinand was shot and killed in Sarajevo. Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbs. Determined to hold Serbia accountable, European diplomats indicated to Austria-Hungary that she had every right to do so. Austria-Hungary therefore sent Belgrade a note in which it demanded the following items:
- The end to anti-Austrian propaganda in Serbian media and education
- The right for Austrian police to investigate the assassination on Serbian soil
- Public apologies from the King and the government
- The immediate surrender of those responsible
They told Serbia it had 48 hours to comply. Once the note was delivered, and well aware that Serbia could not possibly comply, the previously supportive Russian, British, and French governments now expressed outrage at Austria-Hungary.
Serbia, emboldened by Entente’s display of indignation, refused to comply.18 In return, Austria-Hungary turned to Germany for support in military action, and Germany agreed. Until the 11th hour however, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm tried in vain to convince his cousin Nicholas II of Russia not to mobilize Russia’s forces. Germany thus gave Austria-Hungary the historical ‘blank check’ that has been cited ever since as proof of German war guilt.
French President Poincare visited St. Petersburg and guaranteed Russia that “France would not only give Russia strong diplomatic support, but would, if necessary, fulfill all the obligations imposed on her by the alliance.”20 A summary of his visit was sent to Edward Grey at the Foreign Office and, from July 25th onward, Grey made overtures about solving the crisis while Russia and France began mobilizing their armies. Four days later, Britain began mobilizing her own fleet.
On July 29th Czar Nicholas II officially ordered Russian mobilization. But then he received a telegram from the Kaiser:
My ambassador is instructed to draw the attention of your government to the dangers and serious consequences of a mobilisation. If, as appears from your communication and that of your Government, Russia is mobilising against Austria-Hungary … The whole burden of decision now rests upon your shoulders, the responsibility for peace or war.
Nicholas backed down.
But then, on July 30th, Russian foreign minister (and anglophile) Sergei Sazanov spent hours convincing Nicholas II of German treachery, urging him to reorder the mobilization of the armed forces. The Czar was deeply troubled with the weight of the decision, but in the end he capitulated to pressure and the Russian war machine lurched forward:
Nicholas II was still understandably hesitant; according to the French ambassador, “The Czar was deadly pale and replied in a choking voice: ‘Just think of the responsibility you are advising me to assume! Remember, it is a question of sending thousands and thousands of men to their death.'”
Germany was the last country to announce militarization. The key to Britain’s war plan was that Germany would follow its Schlieffen Plan, where German forces would quickly march through Belgium in order to avoid the mountainous Ardennes region, put the french army in its place, then turn around to face east and join Austria-Hungary in squaring off with Russia’s giant army. Unbeknownst to Germany, however, Belgium was not as neutral as it had led everyone to believe, and had started mobilizing its military – which had been secretly prepared and trained by the British – at the same time as France and Russia. But Germany’s invasion of hapless, ‘neutral’ Belgium gave Britain its ‘just cause’ for declaring war on Germany.
As the war began Britain cut Germany’s underseas communication lines, thus ensuring that all information to and from the outside world would be under its control. A year or two later, a poem written from the horrors of the trenches gave evidence of an awareness of the deception that came too late.
Waves of strong men
That will surge not again,
Scattered and riven
You lie, and you rot;
What have you not given?
And what – have you got?
What did we get? We got the imposition of an Israeli apartheid state and an Islamic State (Saudi Arabia) in the Middle East. The world also received the ‘gift’ of a Russian Revolution that gave way to the Soviet Union and the pathocracy which it spread across a large swathe of Eurasia. As German General Ludendorff would lament, foreshadowing the horrors that would come following Germany’s collapse, the Versailles Treaty ‘sent the German people into bondage, into an absolutely crushing one. All delusions have vanished’, he wrote. ‘We look into nothingness. Something else is needed’. Hitlerism would blot out the sun of Europe for decades. And the British Elite? They still refer to themselves as ‘Sir’ and ‘Honorable’ while pointing the finger at Russia as the ‘source of all evil’.
In short, history is proof that no one should ever trust a word the British establishment says.
Back to Today
Throughout modern history, we see the same ‘elite’ pushing, prodding, gaslighting, promising one thing to one country and something entirely different to another. In their pure malevolent instinct, we see the ‘essential psychopath’ at work spinning his web effortlessly across entire nations and generations. The biggest vulnerability? The average person’s tendency to engage in emotional thinking and the chaos it engenders when entire nations are infected by it.
But, as Russian ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov has stated, “The truth will come out. We will not let ourselves to be provoked into an emotional breakdown.” Modern Russia is not Germany under the naive leadership of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who believed his relations with the Russian Tsar and the King of England would safeguard his country from war.
Modern Russia also isn’t Iraq – a small country easily overwhelmed by the superior military strength of NATO with an isolated leader easily smeared due to his past aggression. Modern Russia is a nuclear armed superpower that is organized by some of the most brilliant statesmen this planet has seen – they won’t be deceived, they won’t be out-gunned, and any attack on them will be an act of suicide.
So, for those pushing for war against Russia, their only viable outlet for their destructive anti-Russian impulse is more false flags, more black propaganda and all manner of dirty tricks. In other words they will attempt to poison, sanction, scream, rig, and otherwise sabotage us all into oblivion, and then blame it all on Russia.
References
1. David Fromkin’s A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East p. 232
2. Gerry Docherty & Jim Macgregor’s Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War p. 214
3. P. Hof’s The Two Edwards: How King Edward VII and Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey Started The First World War p. 4
4. David Fromkin’s A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East p. 125
5 Ibid p. 104
6. F. William Engdahl’s A Century of War Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order p. 39
7. Ibid. p. 31
8. Gerry Docherty & Jim Macgregor’s Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War p. 135
9. Ibid. p. 133
10. Ibid. p. 155
11. J. Lee Thompson’s Politicians, the Press, and Propaganda: Lord Northcliffe and the Great War, 1914-1919 Kindle Edition Location 175
12. Gerry Docherty & Jim Macgregor’s Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War p. 148- 149
13. J. Lee Thompson’s Politicians, the Press, and Propaganda: Lord Northcliffe and the Great War, 1914-1919 Kindle Edition Location 175
14. Gerry Docherty & Jim Macgregor’s Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War p. 151
15. Andrew Feinstein’s The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade p. 5
16. Alan Corssal’s Ideology and International Relations in the Modern World p. 121
17. Gerry Docherty & Jim Macgregor’s Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War p. 257
18. Ibid p. 267
19. Ibid p. 293
Corey Schink was born and raised in the Midwestern United States, where he worked on farms and as a welder, musician, and social worker. His interests in government, philosophy and history led to his writing for SOTT in 2012 and to becoming a SOTT editor and Truth Perspective co-host in 2014.
Douma Chemical Attack: Timeline of facts so far
By Kit | OffGuardian | April 8, 2018
A brief post, collating all the known events surrounding the build up to the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria on the 7/8th of April 2018.
- February-April 2018: The Syrian Arab Army has been making quick, decisive gains on the ground in recent weeks. Eastern Ghouta has all but fallen. Barring foreign intervention, the Syrian government’s victory is now all but assured.
- March 13th 2018 Russian military command claims US is aiming to strike Damascus on an “invented pretext”. Advises them against it.
- March 13th 2018 Syrian forces reported finding caches of chemical weapons in labs around liberated areas of Ghouta.
- March 19th 2018 Russian and Syrian military figures reported they feared the rebels would stage a “false flag” chemical attack in order to drag US/NATO into action in Syria.
- March 30th 2018 Donald Trump told a crowd at a speech in Ohio – and later repeated in a tweet – that the USA would be pulling out of Syria “very soon.” This is met with consternation in the capital and across the media.
- April 6th 2018 UNSC meeting convened – at Russian request – to discuss the alleged attack in Salisbury, UK. Every member of the UNSC who spoke was categorical in their condemnation of any use of chemical weapons.
- Night of April 7th/morning of April 8th… a chemical attack is reported by the US/UK funded “White Helmets”. The US blames Syrian govt. and holds Russia “responsible”.
With these facts as they are, we should ask a few questions:
1. Why, with the current international focus on chemical weapons, why would Assad hurt his cause by attacking a non-military target with chemical weapons?
2. With global political discussion focusing more on Saudi Arabian war on Yemen, the Skripal attack, and Israeli violence against Palestinians, why would Assad choose this moment to conduct a chemical attack and potentially distract from these issues?
3. The Syrian Arab Army is currently operating in Douma, why would Assad risk dropping chemical weapons that could hit his own troops?
4. The POTUS has publicly stated he intends to pull out of Syria “very soon”. Why would the Syrian Government endanger this development?
5. Cui bono? Who has the most to gain from this chemical attack? The SAA, who are already winning the war, or the cornered jihadist forces in desperate need of aid and air support?
The Rapidly Evolving Skripal Story: Evidence of the Destruction of an Anglo-American Plan
By James O’Neill | OffGuardian | April 7, 2018
On 4th of March 2018 former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia were found on a park bench in Salisbury England at 16. 15 hours in an unconscious state.
They were tended to by a number of passers by who included a doctor, an off duty nurse and some civilians. It was not known at that stage what had caused the Skripal’s illness. No one had any reason to believe that they were the victims of any nerve agent, and accordingly took no precautions against such a possibility. Despite the very well documented dangers of even casual contact with nerve agents, none of those helpful citizens suffered any ill-effects.
The Skripals were taken to hospital where they have remained ever since. The public were told that they were both in a coma and unable to communicate in any way. Yet on the morning of 7 March 2018 Yulia Skripal accessed the Russian equivalent of her Facebook page (VKontakte).
There are a number of possible explanations for this. She may have briefly returned to consciousness and her first thought was to access VKontakte before relapsing. Alternatively her VK could have been hacked, but that would not have been easy and there is no known evidence to support this possibility. A third possibility, implicit in the words of her treating physician, was that she “came to her senses.” Precisely what that meant is unclear because it was never elaborated upon.
The hospital authorities have disclosed that Yulia is now fully awake, eating, drinking and talking, these and other questions may be able to be asked and answered. Precisely what we are told about Yulia’s answers depends upon who is allowed to talk to her. Another of the disturbing aspects of this case is that none of her family, her fiancé, or the Russian consulate authorities has been permitted access.
This latter fact is directly contrary to the provisions of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The British have pretended that this did not apply to Ms Skripal as she was a Russian national (unlike Sergei who had dual British citizenship) because article 37 of the Convention had not been incorporated into English law.
The judge who heard an application for the taking of blood samples came to this conclusion, apparently without reference to, or being advised by counsel acting for the Skripals on behalf of the British government, that there was in fact a consular treaty between the then Soviet Union and Britain. This treaty was ratified in 1968 and specifically provides for the right of consular access. Article 36 of the treaty provides:
(1) (a) A consular officer shall be entitled within the consular district to communicate with, interview and advise a national of the sending state and it may render him every assistance including, where necessary, arranging for aid and advice in legal matters.
(b) No restriction shall be placed by the receiving state upon the access of a national of the sending state to the consulate or upon communication by him with the consulate.
Notwithstanding this provision, which as the terminology makes clear, is not optional but mandatory, the British continue you to refuse the Russian consular staff their lawful access to the Skripals.
In that same court case (NoB228376 & 13228382 [2018] EWCOP 6 Judgement 22 March 2018) the judge was also apparently not told by counsel that while the Skripals “appeared to have some relatives in Russia” they had not been advised of the application before the court and neither were the Russian authorities. According to the judgement the Russians would find out about the court case after the event because the judge intended to publish his findings!
Ms Skripal does not just “appear” to have relatives in Russia. She has her grandmother and also a fiancé with whom she was living. She also has a cousin, Victoria, with whom she has recently had a conversation according to Russian TV that has released a transcript of the discussion.
The Russian authorities have also released copies of multiple requests made to the British government for consular access and other information. Not only were the requests ignored, contrary to the treaty quoted above, but the judge was not even informed that such requests had been made.
The judgement ordering the taking of blood samples from the Skripals was for the purposes of technical analysis to try and determine what caused their illness, from whence the presumed nerve agent had originated, and possibly identified who might be responsible. Then again it might not, for a host of technical reasons.
The point here however, is that the order was made on 22 March 2018 when the answers to those key questions were not known, unless of course the British themselves or one of their allies were the perpetrators. Both the Police who were inquiring into what was a possible attempted homicide, and the scientific investigation by both Porton Down and the technical team at the OCPW to whom the matter was eventually referred, said that the results would take some time and possibly weeks.
Yet on 14 March 2018, one week before the judgement, and weeks before the scientific results could possibly be known, British prime minister Therese May was telling the House of Commons that the culprit was a nerve agent “of a type developed by Russia” that had been used, and that it was “an unlawful use of force by the Russian State against the United Kingdom.”
Whether or not May appreciated it, such a statement amounted to her declaring that Russia had committed an act of war against the United Kingdom, contrary to international law. Her statements, together with those of her foreign minister Boris Johnson, carried hyperbole to extreme lengths. It immediately brings to mind the Mad Queen from Alice in Wonderland who demanded the sentence before the verdict.
That was not the end of the British rhetorical overkill. The Salisbury hospital authorities directly contradicted the British government’s claims of dozens of people having been affected by the alleged nerve agent. The Consultant at Salisbury Hospital, Dr Stephen Davies, wrote a letter to The Times saying
no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury.
Davies told the newspaper that only three persons were being treated, presumably the Skripals and Detective Sergeant Bailey. Note that the physician was careful not to specify precisely what the three were being treated for, other than that it was not nerve agent poisoning.
This rare example of sanity in the mainstream media was lost in the ongoing stampede to indict, convict and sentence Russia before all of the evidence had been gathered and analysed.
The campaign of vilification against Russia was extended further by the British government circulating a six-page document to 80 foreign embassies in Moscow setting out their “case” for blaming Russia. That “case” was simply risible. Its manifold falsehoods and absurdities have been pointed out elsewhere (O’Neill Australia confirms its colonial status with expulsion of Russian diplomats www.journal-neo.org 5 April 2018).
That did not prevent Australia and more then 20 other allies of the United Kingdom expelling diplomats on no further ground than giving their support to the British government and its absurd claims. Not even all of Britain’s NATO and EU allies and partners were prepared to jump on that particular bandwagon, not to mention the more than 160 nations in the world who dissociated themselves from the allegations.
The means by which the Skripals became infected has also been a subject of constantly changing scenarios. At various times the nerve agent was said to have been brought into Britain in Yulia’s suitcase; that it was placed their car’s air system; and that it was placed on the doorknob of the front door to Mr Skripal’s home.
Here again there were logical contradictions. The nerve agent was said to be up to 8 times more toxic than VX (a nerve agent of a type developed by the British and used in the Kuala Lumpur assassination of a relative of North Korea’s President Kim.) Yet that door was touched multiple times by police and others without them becoming infected.
Even more problematic was the four-hour time gap between when the Skripals left their house and suddenly taking ill before being found on the park bench in central Salisbury. The word “suddenly” is apt because CCTV footage of pair 15 minutes before being discovered on the park bench shows them alive, seemingly healthy and walking along a Salisbury Street without difficulty after having a meal at Zizzi’s restaurant.
If the claims of Novichok’s toxicity are true, then the front door handle could not possibly have infected them. If the nerve agent was so weak that it takes four hours to do its job of rendering targets dead or immobilized, then its utility as a weapon is less than useless.
The weight of logic therefore points to them being infected at some point during the 15 minute interval between leaving the restaurant and being found. Unless either eyewitnesses come forward; the CCTV cameras caught the crucial moment; or the now recovered Yulia is able to shed light on what happened, it may never be possible to ascertain the perpetrators.
On 3 April 2018 a further huge hole was blown in the British government’s case. The director of Porton Down’s defence science and technology laboratory told Britain’s SKY TV News that they had been unable to identify the source of the Novichok agent said to have been used against the Skripals.
The sophistication of the agent used was such, Mr Aitkenhead said, that it could “probably” be deployed only by a nation state. While Russia might be presumed to have such capability, the same is equally true of the United Kingdom, the United States, France, China and a significant number of other states with advanced technical capabilities (Hayward et al http://www.timhayward.wordpress.com 1 April 2018).
The Porton Down statement directly contradicts the assertions of Theresa May, Boris Johnson and their Australian counterparts Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop. The latter pair, in the joint media release of 27 March 2018 said, “this attack is part of a pattern of reckless and deliberate conduct by the Russian state.” It would be unwise to hold one’s breath waiting for an apology from those politicians and a withdrawal of the reckless, unfounded and inflammatory statements.
Instead, the mainstream media has either ignored the Porton Down statement and its implications, or they have been complicit in obscuring the original unequivocal claims of Russian culpability espoused by May, Turnbull and others (http://www.moonofalabama.org 4 April 2018). This dishonesty has been evident throughout this whole saga.
The issue yet to be properly addressed by the investigation is who had the means, motive and opportunity to carry out what increasingly looks like a false flag attack, and a not very competent one at that.
A series of events occurred shortly before the attack on the Skripals that possibly provide some insight into the perpetrator’s motives. First, the so-called Russiagate witch-hunt, attempting to blame Russia for “interfering” (rich in irony) in the 2016 United States presidential election had spectacularly collapsed.
That particular campaign against Russia had relied heavily upon a dossier produced by a “former” British spy named Christopher Steele. In the weeks preceding the Skripal attack it was revealed by Britain’s conservative newspaper the Daily Telegraph among others, that Sergei Skripal had links with Steele and another major player, Pablo Miller, in the Steele dossier saga when they worked together during the time of Skripal’s betrayal of his country. Miller also lived in Salisbury and was known to have had contact with Skripal.
Secondly the Anglo American attempt at regime change in Syria through its terrorist proxies and others had failed miserably thanks largely to Russian and Iranian intervention.
Those terrorist groups have being responsible for a number of false flag chemical weapons attacks blamed upon the Assad Government. With the liberation of Eastern Ghouta, the Syrian and Russian forces found a significant cache of chemical weapons materials. The Russians announced that those materials were clearly destined to be used in another false flag attack that would provide the justification for United States and its “coalition” allies, including Australia, to mount air and missile attacks upon Syrian and Russian forces.
The chemical cache discovery, which received minimal coverage in the western media, was accompanied by a blunt warning from the Russian military command, that any such air and missile attack would be met with retaliation, including against the source of the attack. This was a clear warning to US ships and missile sites. The discovery of the chemical weapons and materials and the blunt warning were sufficient to deter any attack. Clearly however, the Anglo American forces were angered by their plans being thwarted.
Thirdly, on 1 March 2018 President Putin addressed a joint sitting of the Russian Parliament. Part of that speech announced a range of new weapons that were years ahead of any western systems. Russia not only had the capacity to defend itself with its sophisticated S400 anti-missile systems, it could retaliate against any western military attack with devastating force, against which the west had no defence.
Fourthly, despite a prolonged campaign of vilification against Mr Putin, he was overwhelmingly re-elected by the Russian people for a further six-year term. That result was entirely consistent with his level of popularity as revealed in opinion polls conducted by Western polling agencies.
Those results did not stop the western media from a alleging that the vote was rigged, or that Putin did not allow real opposition, and some other desperate claims. The American analyst Gilbert Doctorow has written a number of articles demolishing the western media’s claims, although one is unlikely to see them given wider coverage. (http://www.consortiumnews.com 15 March 2018) Western “analysts” for the most part prefer the comfort of your own prejudices.
In the light of these four factors, it is a reasonable hypothesis that the Skripal attack was a sign of the increasing desperation of some western governments, chief among them the United States and United Kingdom. The propaganda barrage and the pointless posturing over diplomatic expulsions gave those governments and others foolish enough to be taken in by their patently nonsensical allegations some brief self-satisfaction.
The latest revelations from Porton Down however, are exposing that anti-Russia campaign for the shoddy and deceptive conduct that it is. In time, the Skripal incident will be placed alongside the Gulf of Tonkin, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, the attacks upon Yugoslavia in 1996, Afghanistan in 2001, Libya in 2011, and Syria in 2015 as examples of provocations justifying the destruction of societies that threaten Western hegemony.
The Russia-China strategic alliance; the progressive de-dollarization of the world’s economy; and the success of defeats of Anglo American plans in Ukraine, North Korea and elsewhere indicate that the geopolitical balance of the world is changing rapidly. The challenge will be to discourage the increasingly desperate crazies who inhabit Western centres of power from embarking upon a war to try and reverse the inevitable destruction of their rapidly failing plans for “full spectrum dominance.”
James O’Neill is a Barrister at Law and geopolitical analyst. He may be contacted at joneill@qldbar.asn.au
London’s Sincerity in Quest for Truth of Skripal Case in Serious Doubt
Sputnik – April 7, 2018
Anton Utkin, a former UN chemical weapons inspector in Iraq, told Sputnik that the decisions by the UK with regard to the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal demonstrate that London isn’t truly committed to getting to the bottom of the case.
According to the chemical weapons expert, right now London is “sitting an examination” on the sincerity of its objective quest for the truth in the attack on Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who were found unconscious at a shopping center on March 4, which the UK promptly accused Russia of orchestrating.
“London’s disinclination to provide any information on the case, its unwillingness to cooperate and reluctance to openly investigate the matter so that everybody understands their moves and what is going on, indicates that the exam hasn’t been passed,” Utkin told Sputnik.
As for the accusations by UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson that Moscow tried to undermine the independent inquiry of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) by proposing a joint UK-Russia investigation into the matter at the emergency session of the OPCW Executive Council, the expert said that the joint investigation would be self-defeating for the UK.
“I’m afraid London wouldn’t be able to accept the results that it would be possible to achieve within a joint investigation,” he said, “They will fight it tooth and nail.”
The analyst also pointed out that OPCW was invited by the UK to provide “technical assistance” rather than inspection.
“Inspection has a unique right to collect samples wherever its wants and interview whoever it believes is relevant, while the OPCW technical assistance delegation has no such rights. It can collect samples where it is allowed to and interview only those approved [by the UK],” Utkin said.
“And taking into account that it is a technical assistance, in accordance with the confidentiality agreement under the OPCW concord, technically the results of the analysis shouldn’t be made public,” he explained.
Ahmet Uzumcu, director-general of the OPCW, said Wednesday that the results of the sample analyses of the substance used to poison Skripal and his daughter were expected to be received by early next week.
“Once the results of the analyses of the samples are received, the secretariat will produce a report on the basis of these results and will transmit a copy of this report to the United Kingdom,” he said.
According to Uzumcu, the United Kingdom has expressed its wish to be “as transparent as possible” and has already indicated its preference to disclose the report to other state parties of the OPCW. According to Utkin, it is still possible that London will change its mind, taking into account that suspicions are accumulating around the UK’s accusations against Russia.
He stressed that the UK has already violated a number of provisions of the OPCW convention; for instance, by failing to make efforts to settle controversial issues through the exchange of information and consultations and by issuing an ultimatum, with Peter Wilson, permanent representative of the UK to the OPCW, demanding explanations from Russia within 24 hours, while Russia was given no information on what it should explain.
“In accordance with the the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the party is given 10 days to respond, but after 24 hours had passed, Russia was accused, and that was it,” the expert noted.
He said that what Russia can do is abandon moves dependent on voting by the organization’s Executive Council and simply continue staying within the bounds of the convention, as it has so far. On March 13, upon being faced with all the ungrounded allegations, Russia requested that the UK provide the necessary information and offered to switch to a dialogue mode, in accordance with article 9.2.
“Russia offers all ways of cooperation but stumbles across unwillingness to cooperate,” Utkin said, adding that the Convention allows for a number of steps to overcome this reluctance.
For example, Russia can submit a request via the Executive Council asking explanation from the UK, which would mean that without negotiating on the issue all 41 countries would demand that London provides the information. Or via a similar request Russia can demand details from all the countries that at some point produced Novichok, the nerve agent in the case. At a recent Executive Council session Russia provided information backed by evidence on a number of countries where the nerve agent could be produced.
“I believe it is becoming obvious that many countries made haste by following the UK demarche”, Utkin concluded.
See also:
Moscow: UK Justification for Refusal to Grant Skripal’s Niece Visa “Doesn’t Hold Water”
UK Justification for Refusal to Grant Skripal’s Niece Visa “Doesn’t Hold Water”
Sputnik – April 6, 2018
LONDON – The Russian Embassy in UK criticized on Friday the statement by the UK Foreign Office about the violation of immigration rules by Viktoria Skripal who applied for a UK visa, saying that it “does not hold water” and suggested that the UK Embassy should have assisted Skripal in correcting her application.
Earlier on Friday, media reported that the UK Embassy in Russia denied a visa to Viktoria Skripal, a relative of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, who planned to visit her cousin Yulia in the United Kingdom.
“This decision is regrettable and worrying. According to a ‘government source’ quoted by the BBC, the visa was denied because ‘it appears the Russian state is trying to use Viktoria as a pawn.’ This clearly means that the decision has been taken out of purely political considerations,” the embassy said in a statement.
“The Home Office reference to a violation of immigration rules doesn’t hold water. The normal way to correct any violation would be for the British Embassy to advise Ms Skripal on the necessary formalities so as to help her comply with the rules rather than deny the visa altogether,” the statement read further.Earlier, after being denied visa, Viktoria Skripal alleged in an interview with the Sky News that “the British must have something to hide.”
The United Kingdom believes that former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were exposed to the A234 nerve agent in the UK city of Salisbury. The UK government was quick to accuse Russia of involvement in the accident and expel over 25 states expelled Russian diplomats. Russia has refuted all accusations, pointing at the lack of any evidence.
Skripal relative denied visa to visit UK and return poisoned relatives to Russia
RT | April 6, 2018
Sergei Skripal’s niece has been denied a visa to enter the UK after claiming she would come and take her relatives back to Russia.
Viktoria Skripal had planned to travel to Britain after her uncle Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were exposed to a chemical agent in Salisbury on March 4.
The UK Home Office said on Friday that Viktoria is not being granted a visa to come to the UK. “We have refused a visitor visa application from Viktoria Skripal on the grounds that her application did not comply with the Immigration Rules,” a Home Office spokesman said.
Viktoria was behind the first public statements from either of the Skripals and the world’s media this week when she released a recording of a phone call with her cousin Yulia.
In the clip, the two discussed Viktoria getting a visa. Yulia flatly told her she would not be granted one.
“Vika, nobody will give you a visa,” Yulia said.
She said she and her father were fine and there were no life changing injuries. She gave little detail other than to say they would address one issue at a time.
Russian Ambassador Alexander Yakavenko said the embassy is currently getting its information from the mainstream media, after being locked out of Britain’s investigation. He says requests for access to the Skripals have been repeatedly denied.
Media Warn of ‘Russian Bots’—Despite Primary Source’s Disavowal
By Adam Johnson | FAIR | April 5, 2018
Washington Post (4/2/18)
One could forgive the average reader for thinking reporters covering bots had been replaced by bots. The formula is something we’ve seen a million times now: After a controversial story breaks, media outlets insist that “Russian bots” used the controversy to “sow discord” or “exploit tensions”; a “Russian bot dashboard” is offered as proof. (These “dashboards” let one see what Russian bots—automated online persona controlled by the Kremlin—are allegedly “pushing” on social media.)
The substance of the concern or discord is underreported or ignored altogether. Online conflict is neatly dismissed as a Kremlin psyop, the narrative of Russia interference in every aspect of our lives is reinforced, and one is reminded to be “aware” of Russian trolls online.
Note the latest iteration of this story:
- Russian Bots Are Rallying Behind Embattled Fox News Host Laura Ingraham as Advertisers Dump Her Show (Business Insider, 4/1/16)
- Russian Bots Defend Fox News Pundit Laura Ingraham as Advertisers Leave Following David Hogg Tweet (Newsweek, 4/2/18)
- Russian Bots Are Tweeting Their Support of Embattled Fox News Host Laura Ingraham (Washington Post, 4/2/18)
- Russian Bots Flock to Laura Ingraham Feud With Parkland Student: Report (The Hill, 4/2/18)
- Russian Bots Rush to Laura Ingraham’s Defense in David Hogg Feud (Washington Times, 4/2/18)
Not to be confused with the Russian bots that were heard from after the Austin bombings from last month:
- Russian Social Accounts Adding to Complaints That Austin Bombings Aren’t Being Covered (NPR, 3/19/18)
- Fallout of Austin Bombings Exposes Racial Tensions, Russian Bots and Media Distrust (France 24, 4/1/18)
- Russian Bots Were Sowing Discord During Hunt for Austin Bomber, Group Says (Houston Chronicle, 3/20/18)
Or the bots from Russia that were seen in the wake of the Parkland massacre:
- After Florida School Shooting, Russian ‘Bot’ Army Pounced (New York Times, 2/19/18)
- After the Parkland Shooting, Pro-Russian Bots Are Pushing False-Flag Allegations Again (Washington Post, 2/16/18)
- How Russian Trolls Exploited Parkland Mass Shooting on Social Media (Politifact, 2/22/18)
One problem, though: The “Russian bot dashboard” reporters generally cite as their primary source, Hamilton 68, effectively told reporters to stop writing these pieces six weeks ago. According to a report from Buzzfeed (2/28/18)—hardly a fan of the Kremlin—Russian bot stories are “bullshit”:
The New York Times (2/19/18)
By now you know the drill: massive news event happens, journalists scramble to figure out what’s going on, and within a couple hours the culprit is found — Russian bots.
Russian bots were blamed for driving attention to the Nunes memo, a Republican-authored document on the Trump-Russia probe. They were blamed for pushing for Roy Moore to win in Alabama’s special election. And here they are wading into the gun debate following the Parkland shooting. “[T]he messages from these automated accounts, or bots, were designed to widen the divide and make compromise even more difficult,” wrote the New York Times in a story following the shooting, citing little more than “Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia.”
This is, not to mince words, total bullshit.
The thing is, nearly every time you see a story blaming Russian bots for something, you can be pretty sure that the story can be traced back to a single source: the Hamilton 68 dashboard, founded by a group of respected researchers, including Clint Watts and JM Berger, and currently run under the auspices of the German Marshall Fund.
But even some of the people who popularized that metric now acknowledge it’s become totally overblown.
“I’m not convinced on this bot thing,” said Watts, the cofounder of a project that is widely cited as the main, if not only, source of information on Russian bots.
Watts, the media’s most cited expert on so-called “Russian bots” and co-founder of Hamilton 68, says the narrative is “overdone.” The three primary problems, as Buzzfeed, reported, are:
- The bots on the Hamilton 68 dashboard are not necessarily connected to Russia: “They are not all in Russia,” Watts told Buzzfeed. “We don’t even think they’re all commanded in Russia—at all. We think some of them are legitimately passionate people that are just really into promoting Russia.” (Hamilton 68 doesn’t specify which accounts are viewed as Russian bots; that’s a trade secret.)
- Twitter is clogged with bots, so telling which are Russian and which aren’t is impossible. Bots naturally follow trending or popular stories, like all the stories cited above; how does one distinguish “Russian bot” activity versus normal online trend-chasing?
- Tons of bots are run out of the United States, in totally routine partisan marketing efforts; the singular obsession with Russia lets these shady players off the hook. And, again, it’s almost impossible to distinguish between simply partisan GOP bots and “Russian” ones.
BuzzFeed (2/28/18)
Put another way: These stories are of virtually no news value, other than smearing whichever side the “Russian bots” happened to support, and reinforcing in the public mind that one cannot trust unsanctioned social media accounts. Also that the Russians are hiding in every shadow, waiting to pounce.
Another benefit of the “Russian bots agitate the American public” stories is they prevent us from asking hard questions about our society. After a flurry of African-American Twitter users alleged a racist double standard in the coverage of the Austin bombings in March (which killed two people, both of them black), how did NPR address these concerns? Did it investigate their underlying merit? Did it do media analysis to see if there was, in fact, a dearth of coverage due to the victims’ race? No, it ran a story on how Russia bots were fueling these concerns: “Russian Social Accounts Adding to Complaints That Austin Bombings Aren’t Being Covered” (All Things Considered, 3/19/18):
NPR’s Philip Ewing: Well, there’s two things taking place right now. Some of this is black users on Twitter saying that because some of the victims in this story were not white, this isn’t getting as much attention as another story about bombings, or a series of bombings in the United States, would or should, in this view.
This seems like a pretty serious charge, and would have a lot of historical precedent! Does NPR interrogate this thread further? Does it interview any of these “black users”? No, they move on to the dastardly Russians:
Ewing: But there’s also additional activity taking place on Twitter which appears initially to be connected with the Russian social media agitation that we’ve sort of gotten used to since the 2016 presidential race. There are dashboards and online tools that let us know which accounts are focusing on which hashtags from the Russian influence-mongers who’ve been targeting the United States since 2016, and they, too, have been tweeting about Austin bombings today.
NPR host Ailsa Chang: The theory being that these Russian bots are being used to drive a wedge between groups of people here in the United States about this issue, about the coverage being potentially racist.
Ewing: That’s right.
Nothing to see here! There’s a problem in our society—systemic racism in American media—and rather than an examination of whether it’s affecting coverage here, what the listener gets is yet another boilerplate story about “Russian bots,” the degree, scope and impact of which is wholly unknown, and likely inconsequential. Hesitant to cite Hamilton 68 by name (perhaps because its co-founder mocked this very kind of story a few weeks prior), NPR reporter Ewing simply cites “dashboards and online tools” as his source.
To All Things Considered (3/19/18)
Which ones? It doesn’t really matter, because “Russian bots support X” reports are a conditioning exercise more than a story. The fact that this paint-by-numbers formula is still being applied weeks after the primary source’s co-founder declared himself “not convinced on this bot thing” and called the story “overdone” demonstrates this. The goal is not to convey information or give the reader tools to better understand the world, it’s to give the impression all unrest is artificially contrived by a foreign entity, and that the status quo would otherwise be rainbows and sunshine. And to remind us that the Enemy lurks everywhere, and that no one online without a blue checkmark can be trusted.
The Skripal case and the misuse of ‘intelligence’
By Alexander Mercouris | The Duran | April 5, 2018
The events of the last few days in the Skripal case provide an object lesson of why in criminal investigations the rules of due process should always be adhered to. The reason the British now find themselves in difficulties is because they have not adhered to them.
This despite the fact that – as they all too often like to remind us – it was the British themselves who largely created them.
The single biggest unexplained mystery about the Skripal case is why it attracted so much attention so quickly.
Within hours of Sergey and Yulia Skripal being found passed out on a bench the British media were feverishly speculating that they had been poisoned by Russia.
This despite the fact that no information at that point existed which warranted such speculation, and despite pleas for the investigation to be allowed to take its course from the police and from the government minister responsible for the police, Home Secretary Amber Rudd (who has ever since been conspicuously silent about the whole affair).
Within three days of Sergey and Yulia Skripal being found passed out on a bench – and before any information linking the incident to Russia had become publicly available – the British government’s COBRA committee was meeting – a fact which caused me incredulity – during which a highly revealing article in The Times of London has now revealed it was already agreed that Russia was “almost certainly” responsible.
A Whitehall source added: “We knew pretty much by the time of the first Cobra [the emergency co-ordination briefing that took place the same week] that it was overwhelmingly likely to come from Russia.” (bold italics added)
“It” of course refers to the chemical agent which poisoned Sergey and Yulia Skripal, with the clear implication that by the date of the first COBRA meeting on 7th March 2018 – three days after Sergey and Yulia Skripal were found in the bench – “it” had already been identified as a Novichok “of a type developed by Russia”.
If what this article says is true – and despite the fact that the article is full of tendentious reporting (of which more below) on this one point I am inclined to believe what it says – then that must mean either (1) that Porton Down is highly familiar with the properties of Novichok agents if it can identify the agent used so quickly; or (2) the British authorities already had “other” information before Porton Down completed its analysis which caused them to think that Sergey and Yulia Skripal were poisoned with a chemical agent “of a type developed by Russia”.
If it was the first then note that Porton Down took no more than three days to identify the poison as a Novichok despite the fact (1) that Novichok agents are not in general use and are supposed to be very rare and there is no known instance of their having been used before (it seems that contrary to previous reports the Kivelidi murder in 1995 in Russia did not involve use of a Novichok); and (2) that confirming Porton Down’s analysis that the poison is a Novichok is taking the OPCW’s experts two weeks.
If it was the second, and the COBRA committee came to its view on 7th March 2018 that Russia was ‘almost certainly responsible’ before Porton Down had identified the poison, then the last few weeks have been an exercise in smoke-and-mirrors, with the British authorities pretending that the reason for their belief in Russian responsibility was that the poison used was a Novichok, whereas in reality they came to that belief for some entirely different reason.
If so then that might partially [explain] why Porton Down and the French scientists were able to identify the chemical agent so quickly.
They were able to identify the poison as a Novichok by the weekend prior to Theresa May’s statement to the House of Commons on Monday 12th March 2018 because they were told in advance what to look for.
I do not know which of these alternatives is true. However, for what it’s worth, I believe it is the second because it is the one which makes most sense in light of the known facts.
That this is the likeliest explanation of what happened finds support from The Times of London article which I cited earlier. It contains this highly revealing claim:
Security services believe that they have pinpointed the location of the covert Russian laboratory that manufactured the weapons-grade nerve agent used in Salisbury, The Times has learnt.
Ministers and security officials were able to identify the source using scientific analysis and intelligence in the days after the attempted murder of Sergei and Yulia Skripal a month ago, according to security sources.
Britain knew about the existence of the facility where the novichok poison was made before the attack on March 4, it is understood……
Security sources do not claim 100 per cent certainty but the source has insisted that they have a high degree of confidence in the location. They also believe that the Russians conducted tests to see whether novichok could be used for assassinations.
The disclosure is the latest part of Britain’s intelligence case against Russia, which has been undermined this week by a series of blunders. (bold italics added)
In other words the entire British case against Russia derives not from identification of the poison as a Novichok but from information about the supposed existence of a ‘secret laboratory’ making Novichok in Russia which British intelligence had obtained – or thinks it had obtained – before the attack took place.
That the British case against Russia is intelligence based and is not based on the fact that the poison used was (allegedly) a Novichok is further shown by one case of manipulation of language and one case of crude editing in some of the things which have been said.
The example of manipulation of language is the constant British harping on the fact that the Novichok allegedly used in the attack is “military grade”.
I am not a chemist or a chemical weapons expert but I cannot see how it is possibly to say such a thing given that no military – not even the Russian military – has apparently ever stockpiled Novichok agents for use as a military weapon. How can one say therefore that any particular sample of Novichok is “military grade” if no military has ever stockpiled or used it?
As for the example of editing, it is one which I admit I previously overlooked but which was noticed by the invaluable Craig Murray, whose commentary on the Skripal case has been nothing short of outstanding.
The editing is of what was said by Porton Down chief executive Gary Aitkenhead. Since it was Craig Murray who noticed it rather than discuss it myself I will link and quote to what Craig Murray has to say about it
It is in this final statement that, in a desperate last minute attempt to implicate Russia, Aitkenhead states that making this nerve agent required
“extremely sophisticated methods to create, something probably only within the capabilities of a state actor.”
Very strangely, Sky News only give the briefest clip of the interview on this article on their website reporting it. And the report is highly tendentious: for example it states
However, he confirmed the substance required “extremely sophisticated methods to create, something only in the capabilities of a state actor”.
Deleting the “probably” is a piece of utterly tendentious journalism by Sky’s Paul Kelso.
I did not notice that the key word “probably” had been deleted from what Aitkenhead had said, and as a result my previous article wrongly quoted his words, saying them not as he had said them but as they had been wrongly edited.
It turns out that even what Aitkenhead actually said – that the Novichok agent would have required “extremely sophisticated methods to create, something probably only within the capabilities of a state actor” is almost certainly wrong.
Here is what Craig Murray has to say about that
Motorola sales agent Gary Aitkenhead – inexplicably since January, Chief Executive of Porton Down chemical weapons establishment – said in his Sky interview that “probably” only a state actor could create the nerve agent. That is to admit the possibility that a non state actor could. David Collum, Professor of Organo-Chemistry at Cornell University, infinitely more qualified than a Motorola salesman, has stated that his senior students could do it. Professor Collum tweeted me this morning.
The key point in his tweet is, of course “if asked”. The state and corporate media has not asked Prof. Collum nor any of the Professors of Organic Chemistry in the UK. There simply is no basic investigative journalism happening around this case.
That the entire British case against Russia depends on intelligence is further shown by a further strange development in the case today.
This is that the British authorities are now apparently claiming that the fact that the poison which was used to poison Sergey and Yulia Skripal was supposedly found on Sergey Skripal’s door knob is the ‘smoking gun’ which points to Russia.
Whether that is so or not – and I share Craig Murray’s deep skepticism about this – the alleged presence of the poison on the door knob cannot be the reason why on 7th March 2018 the British government’s COBRA committee had already come to the conclusion that the attack on Sergey and Yulia Skripal “was almost certainly” the work of Russia.
That is because the theory that Sergey and Yulia Skripal were poisoned when they came into contact with the poison on the door knob only appeared several weeks after 7th March 2018.
All the evidence points to fact that the ‘intelligence’ the British government used to come to the conclusion – reached within hours of Sergey and Yulia Skripal being found passed out on a bench – that the attack on them had been carried out by Russia must have come from a human source.
If the British authorities really do possess what they believe to be a Russian assassin’s manual (see Craig Murray again) then that all but confirms it. How else would such a manual have come into their hands?
If that human source really was able to identify the particular poison used in the attack on Sergey and Yulia Skripal in advance, then that suggests a very well informed source indeed.
That might be because the source does have genuine access to secret information about a top secret Russian assassination programme, in which case the Russian authorities will by now almost certainly know who that source is.
However given the complete absence of any other evidence of a top secret Russian assassination programme I must say I doubt this (as I have discussed elsewhere, the Litvinenko case does not provide such evidence).
The alternative – which of course is what many people believe – is that this whole affair is a provocation, staged by someone who then tipped the British off that Novichok – a poison of “a type developed by Russia” but which can in fact easily be made elsewhere (see above) – had been used, whilst misleading the British by giving them a trail of false leads which appeared to point towards Russia.
The claim that the fact that traces of the poison were found on the door knob is the ‘smoking gun’ which points to Russia to my mind rather supports this second theory.
If this claim was made before the poison was found on the door knob it suggests that the source knew in advance that it was there, which would tend to implicate the source in the attack.
If the source provided the information about the alleged ‘assassin’s manual’ after reports appeared in the British media about the poison being found on the door knob – which by the way is what I suspect – then that strongly suggests that the source is adapting its information to the changing news, which suggests manipulation of the intelligence in order to implicate Russia.
Whatever the case the fact that Novichok was probably used to poison Sergey and Yulia Skripal (we will only know with any measure of certainty when the OPCW reports its tests) is not proof that Russia was involved.
The British have got themselves into a total mess by pretending that it is.
They would have avoided getting into this mess – and avoided being manipulated by whoever is giving them ‘secret’ information, if that is what is happening – if they had instead done what their law and traditions dictate they should have done, which is allowed the criminal investigation to take its course.
It bears repeating that at this stage no suspect has been identified in the case and even the theory that Sergey and Yulia Skripal were poisoned by touching Sergey Skripal’s door knob is pure conjecture.
Once again – as in the Litvinenko case and the Russiagate scandal – the course of a criminal investigation has been corrupted by the misuse of ‘intelligence’.
How the Ex-Spy Case is Transforming UK Media Into Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’
Sputnik – April 5, 2018
The admission by scientists from the Porton Down defense lab that that they could not actually verify the source of the nerve agent used to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter has not stopped British media from blaming Russia for the affair, or calling on London to take an even tougher stance against the Russians.
Unnamed ‘security sources’ have told The Times that they may have pinpointed the location of the “covert Russian laboratory” which allegedly created the chemical agent used to poison the Skripals.
According to the newspaper, government ministers and security officials “were able to identify the source using scientific analysis and intelligence” soon after the attack. “We knew pretty much by the time of the first Cobra [the emergency coordination briefing] that it was overwhelmingly likely to come from Russia,” a Whitehall source said.
The Times’ source insisted that the security services have a “high degree of confidence” regarding the location where the chemical was produced, but admitted they were not 100% certain.
Screenshot of The Times’ story.
Not to be outdone, The Sun ran a similar story, claiming that a lab run by Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service in the Moscow district of Yasenevo was the “likely” creator of the poison. The tabloid paraphrased unnamed ‘security sources’, who told the newspaper that the Russian lab is “one of a handful of labs in the world that produces the nerve agent.”
Screengrab of The Sun article.
No Proof Needed
The pair of stories comes 48 hours after Porton Down Defense Science & Technology Laboratory chief Gary Aitkenhead’s admission that the military could not definitively conclude that the nerve agent believed used in the Skripal case was of Russian origin.
The new media efforts to implicate Russia, using unnamed sources and terms such as “likely” and “high degree of confidence” is reminiscent of the kind of language used by the British government in the days and weeks following the poisoning. However, following Tuesday’s revelation by Mr. Aitkenhead, the government and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in particular have been reeling from their attempts to definitively claim Russian involvement in the Skripal case.
Some outlets, including The Independent, decided to meet Aitkenhead’s revelations with a stiff upper lip, insisting that Russia’s efforts in the Skripal case, including its “ever more reasonable-sounding but insincere offers” to help in the investigation, don’t change “the overwhelming probability that the novichok nerve agent originated in Russia…” It is simply “inconceivable that anyone other than the Russians” could organize such a plot, according to the newspaper.
As for Russia’s demand that London actually prove its allegations, The Independent suggests that “a legal standard of proof is not required,” adding that the kind of proof asked for by Moscow is “impossible to achieve.” The paper even accuses Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and others of ‘buying into’ the arguments presented by the Russians.
The Independent’s ‘bold’ editorial amid the revelation that Porton Down scientists couldn’t prove the poison’s origin.
Ministry of Truth
Also, even as the case against Russia over the Salisbury poisoning slowly falls apart, some UK and other Western media continue an effort to further poison Russia-Western relations, insisting that Russia is surely responsible for the attack, and criticizing their governments for not being tough enough on Moscow.
Bloomberg, for example, has run an editorial arguing that while the recent expulsion of dozens of Russian diplomats from dozens of Western countries is all well and good, “it’s too mild” to put real pressure on Vladimir Putin and the Russian government.Rather, the business news agency says, the West should band together to turn up the heat to “counter the domestic propaganda that Putin has used to increase his popularity and build anti-Western sentiment. Reaching out to Russians in big cities and neighboring countries, where dissent exists and could be encouraged, the US and its allies should make clear that the cause of their complaints is Putin and his helpers, not Russia at large.”
Screenshot of the Bloomberg piece.
Commenting on the Bloomberg piece, Rossiya Segodnya politics contributor Viktor Marakhovsky quipped that the logic of the story was just brilliant: “When Russia appeals to the citizens of Western countries with criticism toward their authorities, this is propaganda and an attempt to assert influence. But when it’s the other way around, this is a fight against internal propaganda and bringing the truth to Russia,” he wrote.
The Guardian issued its own editorial, recommending paying more attention to the ‘home front’ to arrange a nationwide informational manhunt of ‘Putin’s trolls’.
Complaining about The Guardian’s comments section being “infected” by “Russian trolls,” the editorial says that while not all offending accounts or hashtags may be Russian-made, “its sentiments chime sufficiently with the trolls’ aim for them to boost it.”
Screengrab of The Guardian editorial.
In other words, Marakhovsky commented, these non-Russian accounts are de facto “enemies because they think and write the wrong thing.” In this way, the journalist noted, the newspaper is effectively calling on Western media “to assume the functions of the Ministry of Truth – to identify both Russian trolls and those who have been infected by their propaganda… and explain to them why their views are wrong, because they happen to agree with the opinion of the Russian foe.”
Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were hospitalized in Salisbury, southern England on March 4 following a chemical attack thought to involve the A-234 nerve agent. Sergei remains in critical condition; his daughter has regained consciousness and is making a recovery. London almost immediately accused Moscow for the attack, and initiated a series of measures directed against Russia, including the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats. Many of the UK’s allies have followed suit. Moscow has rejected London’s accusations, saying claims of Russian involvement are entirely unsubstantiated.
Knobs and Knockers
By Craig Murray | April 5, 2018
What is left of the government’s definitive identification of Russia as the culprit in the Salisbury attack? It is a simple truth that Russia is not the only state that could have made the nerve agent: dozens of them could. It could also have been made by many non-state actors.
Motorola sales agent Gary Aitkenhead – inexplicably since January, Chief Executive of Porton Down chemical weapons establishment – said in his Sky interview that “probably” only a state actor could create the nerve agent. That is to admit the possibility that a non state actor could. David Collum, Professor of Organo-Chemistry at Cornell University, infinitely more qualified than a Motorola salesman, has stated that his senior students could do it. Professor Collum tweeted me this morning.
The key point in his tweet is, of course “if asked”. The state and corporate media has not asked Prof. Collum nor any of the Professors of Organic Chemistry in the UK. There simply is no basic investigative journalism happening around this case.
So given that the weapon itself is not firm evidence it was Russia that did it, what is Boris Johnson’s evidence? It turns out that the British government’s evidence is no more than the technique of smearing nerve agent on the door handle. All of the UK media have been briefed by “security sources” that the UK has a copy of a secret Russian assassin training manual detailing how to put nerve agent on door handles, and that given the nerve agent was found on the Skripals door handle, this is the clinching evidence which convinced NATO allies of Russia’s guilt.
As the Daily Mirror reported in direct quotes of the “security source”:
“It amounts to Russia’s tradecraft manual on applying poison to door handles. It’s the smoking gun. It is strong proof that in the last ten years Russia has researched methods to apply poisons, including by using door handles. The significant detail is that these were the facts that helped persuade allies it could only be Russia that did this.”
Precisely the same government briefing is published by the Daily Mail in a bigger splash here, and reflected in numerous other mainstream propaganda outlets.
Two questions arise. How credible is the British government’s possession of a Russian secret training manual for using novichok agents, and how credible is it that the Skripals were poisoned by their doorknob.
To take the second question first, I see major problems with the notion that the Skripals were poisoned by their doorknob.
The first is this. After what Dame Sally Davis, Chief Medical officer for England, called “rigorous scientific analysis” of the substance used on the Skripals, the government advised those who may have been in contact to wash their clothes and wipe surfaces with warm water and wet wipes. Suspect locations were hosed down by the fire brigade.
But if the substance was in a form that could be washed away, why was it placed on an external door knob? It was in point of fact raining heavily in Salisbury that day, and indeed had been for some time.
Can somebody explain to me the scenario in which two people both touch the exterior door handle in exiting and closing the door? And if it transferred from one to the other, why did it not also transfer to the doctor who gave extensive aid that brought her in close bodily contact, including with fluids?
The second problem is that the Novichok family of nerve agents are instant acting. There is no such thing as a delayed reaction nerve agent. Remember we have been specifically told by Theresa May that this nerve agent is up to ten times more powerful than VX, the Porton Down developed nerve agent that killed Kim’s brother in 15 minutes.
But if it was on the doorknob, the last contact they could possibly have had with the nerve agent was a full three hours before it took effect. Not only that, they were well enough to drive, to walk around a shopping centre, visit a pub, and then – and this is the truly unbelievable bit – their central nervous systems felt in such good fettle, and their digestive systems so in balance, they were able to sit down and eat a full restaurant meal. Only after all that were they – both at precisely the same time despite their substantially different weights – suddenly struck down by the nerve agent, which went from no effects at all, to deadly, on an alarm clock basis.
This narrative simply is not remotely credible. Nerve agents – above all “military grade nerve agents” – were designed as battlefield weapons. They do not leave opponents fighting fit for hours. There is no description in the scientific literature of a nerve agent having this extraordinary time bomb effect. Here another genuine Professor describes their fast action in Scientific American :
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. Victims of the Tokyo subway attack were reported to be bringing up blood. Kim Jong-nam died in less than 20 minutes. Eventually, you die either through asphyxiation or cardiac arrest.
If the nerve agent was on the door handle and they touched it, the onset of these symptoms would have occurred before they reached the car. They would certainly have not felt like sitting down to a good lunch two hours later. And they would have been dead three weeks ago. We all pray that Sergei also recovers.
The second part of the extraordinarily happy coincidence of the nerve agent being on the door handle, and the British government having a Russian manual on applying nerve agent to door handles, is whether the manual is real. It strikes me this is improbable – it rings far too much of the kind of intel they had on Iraqi WMD. It also allegedly dates from the last ten years, so Putin’s Russia, not the period of chaos, and the FSB is a pretty tight organisation in this period. MI6 penetration is just not that good.
A key question is of course how long the UK has had this manual, and what was its provenance. Another key question is why Britain failed to produce it to the OPCW – and indeed why it does not publish it now, with any identifying marks of the particular copy excluded, given it has widely publicised its existence and possession of it. If Boris Johnson wants to be believed by us, publish the Russian manual.
We also have to consider whether the FSB really publishes its secret assassination techniques in a manual. I attended, as other senior FCO staff, a number of MI6 training courses. One on explosives handling was at Fort Monckton, not too far from Salisbury. One in a very nondescript London office block was on bugging techniques. I recall seeing rigs set up to drill minute holes in walls, turning very slowly indeed. Many hours to get through the wall but almost no noise or vibration. It was where I learnt the government can listen to you through activating the microphone in your mobile phone, even when your phone is switched off. I recall javelin like directional microphones suspended from ceilings to point at distant targets, and a listening device that worked through a beam of infra-red light, but the target could foil by closing the curtains.
The point is that there were of course no manuals for this stuff, no manuals for any other secret MI6 techniques, and these things are not lightly written down.
I would add to this explanation that I lost all faith in the police investigation when it was taken out of the hands of the local police force and given to the highly politicised Metropolitan Police anti-terror squad. I suspect the explanation of the remarkably convenient (but physically impossible) evidence of the door handle method that precisely fits the “Russian manual” may lie there.
These are some of the problems I have with the official account of events. Boris lied about the certainty of the provenance of the nerve agent, and his fall back evidence is at present highly unconvincing. None of which proves it was not the Russian state that was responsible. But there is no convincing proof that it was, and there are several other possibilities. Eventually the glaring problems with the official narrative might be resolved, but what is plain is that Johnson and May have been premature and grossly irresponsible.
I shall post this evening on Johnson’s final claim, that only the Russians had motive.
Update: I have just listened to the released alleged phone conversation between Yulia Skripal in Salisbury Hospital and her cousin Viktoria, which deepens the mystery further. I should say that in Russian the conversation sounds perfectly natural to me. My concern is after the 30 seconds mark where Viktoria tells Yulia she is applying for a British visa to come and see Yulia.
Yulia replies “nobody will give you a visa”. Viktoria then tells Yulia that if she is asked if she wants Viktoria to visit, she should say yes. Yulia’s reply to this is along the lines of “that will not happen in this situation”, meaning she would not be allowed by the British to see Viktoria. I apologise my Russian is very rusty for a Kremlinbot, and someone might give a better translation, but this key response from Yulia is missing from all the transcripts I have seen.
What is there about Yulia’s situation that makes her feel a meeting between her and her cousin will be prevented by the British government? And why would Yulia believe the British government will not give her cousin a visa in the circumstance of these extreme family illnesses?
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From the Archives
Neocons confess: “We did 9/11-anthrax”
By Kevin Barrett | Press TV | September 6, 2014
As the 13th anniversary of the crimes of September, 2001 approaches, the neoconservatives are shrieking from the rooftops – and effectively confessing that they were the real perpetrators of the 9/11-Anthrax false flag operation. (The neocons, you may recall, openly called for a “new Pearl Harbor” in September, 2000 – and got one exactly one year later.)
Every year at this time, the neocons orchestrate and hype a series of public relations stunts designed to magnify fears of “radical Islam” and reinforce their crumbling 9/11-Anthrax cover story. But this year’s propaganda campaign is so extreme that it represents a tacit confession: The neocons know that the truth about the 9/11-Anthrax operation is slowly closing in on them; so they are over-reacting by desperately trying to stoke the dying embers of the so-called War on Terror, in order to maintain the myth that Muslims (rather than neoconservative Zionists) attacked America in the autumn of 2001.
When a hysterical person exhibits guilty demeanor by trying too hard to blame a crime on someone else, that person is almost certainly the real perpetrator. As the neocons try much too hard to blame Islam for 9/11 and “terrorism” in general, their hysteria inadvertently reveals their own culpability. Like Shakespeare’s Lady MacBeth, the neoconservative movement has blood on its hands and “doth protest too much.” … continue
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