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The Guardian Distorts Nicaragua’s Indio Maiz Fire

teleSUR | April 14, 2018

Under the headline ‘Nicaragua fires: aid from Costa Rica rejected as blaze destroys rainforest,’ the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper has published another politically skewed report smearing Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. This time, the pretext is a devastating forest fire affecting the peripheral buffer zone of the Indio Maiz Biological Reserve. Falsely alleging that Nicaragua has rejected the offer of help from Costa Rica, the Guardian report uses the standard NATO propaganda attack recipe, blending false reports from hostile opposition media and anti-government NGOs.

The article argues that Nicaragua’s government has been negligent in protecting the Indio Maiz Biological Reserve; has not sought international help, and has deliberately facilitated invasion of the reserve by impoverished rural families seeking land.

Reality completely contradicts the report’s main assertions. The Guardian refers to a statement by the Costa Rican government saying that a unit of Costa Rican firefighters was turned away, but the Guardian report offers neither a link to the alleged statement nor any quote from it.

Here’s the Costa Rican fire service spokesman on the matter: “We are fully ready to cooperate in any other incident. From what we can see, this incident has already been controlled by the army. We were at the border and had to return. We see no problem. In the moment (we offered to help) Nicaragua they didn’t have the personnel to fight the fire; thankfully, over the last few hours, it now has the personnel to deal with this emergency and they are engaged in controlling and extinguishing the fire.”

In fact, the decision not to use the help offered by Costa Rica was taken jointly by the chiefs of the Nicaraguan and Costa Rican fire services during a meeting in Managua on April 8, when they agreed that “the realistic possibilities of controlling the fire by the firefighting services of Nicaragua and Costa Rica were limited due to the characteristics of the fire and that the effective means to control and extinguish the fire is from the air.” In any case, access to the area of the fire was impractical overland, with access being possible almost exclusively by air or sea along the region’s Caribbean coast.

Nicaragua’s Vice-President Rosario Murillo said on April 9, in relation to coordination with the director of operations of the Costa Rican Fire Fighting Service: “We have been in meetings with him all weekend, looking precisely at what is being done, the difficulty of reaching the place… There, where the fire has broken out, it’s impossible to reach with trucks or pick-ups. What’s really needed, urgently, are airplanes equipped with all the technical means to fight forest fires.”

Murillo also explained on April 10 that the Sandinista government led by President Daniel Ortega had “coordinated with Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, Mexico, the Russian Federation, the air forces of each one of these countries, requesting air resources to fight the fires.” Currently, helicopters from Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador are helping control and extinguish the fire, contradicting the impression given by the Guardian’s report that the government had not sought international help.

The Nicaraguan government has also coordinated support from U.S. authorities, with a specialist team sent from USAID’s Office of Disaster Assistance and the U.S. Forestry Service. The team leader arrived in Nicaragua on April 10. The Guardian’s April 11 report includes none of this information, which contradicts the impression that report gives by citing environmentalists calling on the government to seek international support, as if it had not already done so a week before the Guardian’s report was published.

The report quotes criticism from well-known Nicaraguan environmentalist Jaime Incer Barquero. Now in his 80s, Incer Barquero has made distinguished contributions to environmental conservation in Nicaragua. However, his pronouncements on the fire in the Indio Maiz Biological Reserve demonstrate ignorance of the measures taken by the Nicaraguan government to control the fire. The Guardian report also quotes a representative of the Fundacion Rio NGO, who noted ‘relations between the countries have not been the best’ due to a long-running border dispute. But as Costa Rica’s cooperation with Nicaragua makes clear, diplomatic relations take a back seat in the context of a major regional ecological threat like the Indio Maiz forest fire.

The Fundacion Rio NGO has solicited funds supposedly to support community authorities and firefighters in the Indio Maiz area, a function well beyond the organization’s statutory objectives. It has now been warned by the Nicaraguan government not to solicit funds for purposes it was not established to carry out: functions which are the government’s responsibility and which the government is fulfilling. The self-serving propaganda of this kind of environmentalist NGO is no doubt the basis for the Guardian’s allegation that “the fires are believed to have been started by illegal homesteaders, who were attempting to clear land for planting crops.”

In fact, the fires began in a marshland area completely unsuitable for agricultural activity, either arable farming or pasture for cattle. One of Nicaragua’s leading environmental scientists, Efrain Acuña, has dismissed the accusation that the area was set on fire so as to facilitate arable or cattle farming: “The soils in this zone do not lend themselves to those activities, among other reasons because the acidity is high, the fertility percentages for grazing are very low and so the nutritional value for cattle is insufficient.”

The Guardian quotes Gabriel Jaime of Fundacion Rio as saying that the government has encouraged rural workers and their families to encroach on land belonging mainly to the Indigenous Rama people, but gives no context to that allegation. Jaime’s solution is “removing people and telling them ‘You can’t live in a protected area.”’ Jaime also criticizes the government’s provision of health and education services in the area, as if these did not benefit the local Indigenous population. This is another example of a neocolonial NGO patronizing local Indigenous people who own their land and have a strong say in how it is used.

The same false neocolonial argument has been used to misrepresent the potential displacement of Indigenous people should Nicaragua’s interoceanic canal go ahead. The canal company HKND and the Nicaraguan authorities consulted with local Indigenous people who agreed terms for the canal’s construction across their land, but that fact has been systematically omitted or misrepresented by environmentalists in the same way as the complex issue of migration by rural workers families to areas of the Caribbean coast has been.

Western NGOs and the local organizations they fund around the world undermine the role and functions of sovereign national governments. That is why Western corporations finance them. It is also why foreign news coverage by Western corporate media systematically distorts and misrepresents the reality of events around the world. The Guardian report on the Indio Maiz forest fire categorically demonstrates that fact one more time.

April 15, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Environmentalism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

US, allies could stop Syrian conflict within 24 hours if they wanted to – Russian envoy

RT | April 14, 2018

Russia called the strikes that the US, the UK, and France carried out in Syria a “blatant disregard of international law.” Moscow’s envoy to UN said the three countries could have stopped the conflict in Syria within 24 hours.

By acting without any mandate from the UN Security Council, the US and its allies violated the norms and principles of international law, as well as undermining the authority of the UNSC, Russian Envoy to the UN Vassily Nebenzia said, denouncing the strikes against Syria as “an aggression against a sovereign state.”

Nebenzia also called the attack “hooliganism” in international relations, noting that it is not a small one, as nuclear powers are involved. He said that the countries used a well-tried pattern of “provocation-false accusations – false sentence – punishment.”

“Is this the way you want to conduct international affairs?” he said.

“The conflict in Syria could have been stopped within 24 hours. Washington, London and Paris should have told their pocket terrorists to stop fighting the legitimate government of their people,” Nebenzia said.

He said that the two research facilities that were targeted in the strike had been inspected by the OPCW, which didn’t find any traces of chemical weapons.

Just like they did a year ago, the US used a stagedchemical attack against civilians as a pretext for its strikes, Nebenzia said, adding that Russian military experts found no trace of any chemical agent at the scene of the alleged attack in the Damascus suburb of Douma. “In a sign of cynical disdain,” a group of Western countries decided to take military action without waiting for a group of OPCW experts to present the results of an investigation into the incident, according to Nebenzia.

Russia did “everything possible” to convince the US and its allies to refrain from their military plans, which could destabilize not only Syria but the whole Middle East. However, Washington, London, and Paris “preferred to disregard appeals to common sense,” he added.

“The time for talk ended last night,” the US envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, said, referring to the coalition airstrikes in Syria. She then added that the US, the UK, and France “acted” not out of “revenge… punishment [or] a symbolic show of force but… to deter the future use of chemical weapons” by holding the Syrian government responsible for what she called “atrocities against humanity.”

She also claimed that the actions of the coalition were “justified, legitimate and proportionate.”

The British representative to the UN, Karen Pierce, called the coalition operation a success, claiming that “none of the British, French or US aircraft or missiles involved in this operation were successfully engaged by the Syrian air defenses.” Pierce also called the UK actions a “humanitarian intervention” aimed at “alleviating overwhelming humanitarian suffering” of the Syrian people.

April 14, 2018 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Skripal event and the Douma “gas attack” – two acts in the same drama?

OffGuardian | April 14, 2018

The illegal air strikes on Syria by the coalition of the guilty (US, France, UK) have happened, to no one’s great surprise. As such things go all current indications are that they were more token than anything else. The Russians are saying around 100 missiles were fired at an unclear number of targets, of which around 70% were intercepted. Syrian General Staff are reporting 3 injuries and no deaths. Mattis was at pains to say this was a one-off, though adding the reckless caveat that any further evidence of chemical weapons usage by Assad might change that (thus giving every lunatic or CIA/neocon-controlled cell in Syria a pure gold motive for a false fag).

Compared to how bad this might have been, this is a fairly harmless result for the present.

We’ve resisted the temptation to do any kind of analysis of things so far, preferring to let them play out and to document developments and opinions. But maybe this is a good time to offer a tentative overview of what seems to have been going on in the past weeks.

1) The Douma “gas attack” was likely faked

The only evidence we have for any “gas attack” in Douma on April 7 is the video released on April 7-8, showing piles of corpses, mostly children, some with foam around their mouths. When, where or how the video was made is not verifiable. Who killed the children shown or how they died is not verifiable. Additionally we have images of an alleged “gas canister”, again without any sourcing or verification, and which have been widely suggested to be implausible. And there is Bellingcat (Eliot Higgins), contributing his usual brand of “comparisons” of images and Google maps, adding nothing that could be described even loosely as verification of the salient claims.

In opposition to this the Russians are claiming the event was staged. They allege their armed forces entered Douma shortly after the alleged attack and claim to have found no evidence of chemical weapons usage, no witnesses and no victims.

They have also released video statements by two young men claiming to be doctors at the hospital. They describe people running in to the hospital screaming that there had been a chemical attack, inciting panic among the people there, and “unqualified” people administering to children, giving them “asthma inhalers.” However, he says, there were no victims of such a chemical treated there, only victims of smoke inhalation from recent shelling and subsequent fires.

There is also the notable reluctance by US Defense Secretary, James Mattis to fully endorse the reality of this narrative. Even on April 12, just hours before the air strikes were to be implemented, he was still publicly saying he had seen no evidence to show the gas attacks happened or who may have been responsible. Given his senior position on the Trump administration, and his previously gungho attitude to military adventurism, this is significant.

Of greatest potential significance is the claim by the Russian foreign ministry that they have evidence the UK government was directly involved in staging the fake attack or encouraging a false flag. So far they haven’t released this data, so we can’t comment further at this time.

2) Primarily UK initiative?

The fact (as stated above) that Mattis was apparently telegraphing his own private doubts a) about the verifiability of the attacks, and b) about the dangers of a military response, suggests he was a far from enthusiastic partaker in this adventure. Trump’s attitude is harder to gauge. His tweets veered wildly between unhinged threats and apparent efforts at conciliation. But he must have known he would lose (and seemingly has lost) a great part of his natural voter base (who elected him on a no-more-war mandate) by an act of open aggression that threatened confrontation with Russia on the flimsiest of pretexts.

Granted the US has been looking for excuses to intervene ever more overtly in Syria since 2013, and in that sense this Douma “initiative” is a continuation of their long term policy. It’s also true Russia was warning just such a false flag would be attempted in early March. But in the intervening month the situation on the ground has changed so radically that such an attempt no longer made any sense.

A false flag in early March, while pockets of the US proxy army were still holding ground in Ghouta would have enabled a possible offensive in their support which would prevent Ghouta falling entirely into government hands and thereby also maintain the pressure on Damascus. A false flag in early April is all but useless because the US proxy army in the region was completely vanquished and nothing would be gained by an offensive in that place at that time.

You can see why Mattis and others in the administration might be reluctant to take part in the false flag/punitive air strike narrative if they saw nothing currently to be gained to repay the risk. They may have preferred to wait for developments and plan for a more productive way of playing the R2P card in the future.

The US media has been similarly, and uncharacteristically divided and apparently unsure. Tucker Carlson railed against the stupidity of attacking Syria. Commentators on MSNBC were also expressing intense scepticism of the US intent and fear about possible escalation.

The UK govt and media on the other hand has been much more homogeneous in advocating for action. No doubts of the type expressed by Mattis have been heard from the lips of any UK government minister. Even May, a cowardly PM, has been (under how much pressure?) voicing sterling certitude in public that action HAD to be taken.

Couple this with the – as yet unverified – claims by Russia of direct UK involvement in arranging the Douma “attack” and a tentative story-line emerges.

The Skripal consideration

Probably the only thing we can all broadly agree on about the Skripal narrative is that it manifestly did not go according to plan. However it was intended to play out, it wasn’t this way. Since some time in mid to late March it’s been clear the entire thing has become little more than an exercise in damage-limitation, leak-plugging and general containment.

The official story is a hot mess of proven falsehoods, contradictions, implausible conspiracy theories, more falsehoods and inexplicable silences where cricket chirps tell us all we need to know.

The UK government has lied and evaded on every key aspect.

1) It lied again and again about the information Porton Down had given it

2) Its lawyers all but lied to Mr Justice Robinson about whether or not the Skripals had relatives in Russia in an unscrupulous attempt to maintain total control of them, or at least of the narrative.

3) It is not publishing the OPCW report on the chemical analyses, and the summary of that report reads like an exercise in allusion and weasel-wording. Even the name of the “toxic substance” found in the Skripals’ blood is omitted, and the only thing tying it to the UK government’s public claims of “novichok” is association by inference and proximity. Indeed if current claims by Russian FM Lavrov turn out to be true, “novichok” may indeed not have been found in those samples at all and the active substance was a compound called “BZ”, a non-lethal agent developed in Europe and America. (more about that later).

None of the alleged victims of this alleged attack has been seen in public even in passing since the event. There is no film or photographs of DS Bailey leaving the hospital, no film or photographs of his wife or family members doing the same. No interviews with Bailey, no interviews with his wife, family, distant relatives, work colleagues.

The Skripals themselves were announced to be alive and out of danger mere days after claims they were all but certain to die. Yulia, soon thereafter, apparently called her cousin Viktoria only to subsequently announce, indirectly through the helpful agency of the Metropolitan Police, that she didn’t want to talk to her cousin – or anyone else – at all. She is now allegedly discharged from hospital and has “specially trained officers… helping to take care of” her in an undisclosed location. A form or words so creepily sinister it’s hard to imagine how they were ever permitted the light of day.

Very little of this bizarre, self-defeating, embarrassing, hysterical story makes any sense other than as a random narrative, snaking wildly in response to events the narrative-makers can’t completely control.

Why? What went wrong? Why has the UK government got itself into this mess?

Is this what happened?

If a false flag chemical attack had taken place in Syria at the time Russia predicted, just a week or two after the Skripal poisoning, a lot of the attention that’s been paid to the Skripals over the last month would likely have been diverted. Many of the questions being asked by Russia and in the alt media may never have been asked as the focus of the world turned to a possible superpower stand-off in the Middle East.

So, could it be the Skripal event was never intended to last so long in the public eye? Could it be that it was indeed a false flag, as many have alleged, planned as a sketchy prelude to, or warm up act for a bigger chemical attack in Syria, scheduled for a week or so later in mid-March – just around the time Russia was warning of such a possibility?

Could it be this planned event was unexpectedly canceled by the leading players in the drama (the US) when the rapid and unexpected fall of Ghouta meant any such intervention became pointless at least for the moment?

Did this cancellation leave the UK swinging in the wind, with a fantastical story that was never intended to withstand close scrutiny, and no second act for distraction?

This would explain why the UK may have been pushing for the false flag to happen even after it could no longer serve much useful purpose on the ground, and why the Douma “attack” seems to have been so sketchily done by a gang on the run. It would explain why the US has been less than enthused by the idea of reprisals. Because while killing Syrians to further geo-strategic interests is not a problem, killing Syrians (and risking escalation with Russia) in order to rescue an embarrassed UK government is less appealing.

If this is true, Theresa May and her cabinet are currently way out on a limb even by cynical UK standards. Not only have they lied about the Skripal event, but in order to cover up that lie they have promoted a false flag in Syria, and “responded “ to it by a flagrant breach of international and domestic law.

This is very bad.

But even if some or all of our speculation proves false, and even if the Russian claims of UK collusion with terrorists in Syria prove unfounded, May is still guilty of multiple lies and has still waged war without parliamentary approval.

This is a major issue. She and her government should resign. But it’s unlikely that will happen. So what next? There is a sense this is a watershed for many of the parties involved and for the citizens of the countries drawn into this.

Will the usual suspects try to avoid paying for their crimes and misadventures by more rhetoric, more false flags, more “reprisals”? Or will this signal some other change in direction?

We’ll all know soon enough.

April 14, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Goal of Syria strikes was to prevent chemical watchdog’s fact-finding mission in Douma – Moscow

RT | April 14, 2018

The US and its allies attacked Syria in order to hamper the work of the OPCW inspectors, investigating the alleged chemical attack in Douma, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

The “intimidation act” by the US, UK, and France was carried out “under an absolutely far-fetched pretext of the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian authorities in the Damascus suburb of Douma on April 7,” the ministry said in a statement.

The airstrikes were conducted hours before inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were to start their fact-finding mission at the site. “There’s every reason to believe that the purpose of the attack on Syria was to obstruct the work of the OPCW inspectors,” the statement read.

Moscow pointed out that the Western allies ignored evidence provided by Syria and Russia that the alleged chemical attack was actually staged in a “cynical” manner.

“It’s becoming absolutely clear that those in the West, who are hiding behind the humanitarian rhetoric and trying to justify their military presence in Syria with the need of defeating the jihadists, are on the same side as them [the terrorists], working towards dismembering the country,” the Foreign Ministry said. It added that such conclusions are also backed by the unwillingness of the US and its allies to participate in the reconstruction or the areas liberated by the Syrian government.

The ministry also pointed out that the strikes were carried out when the Syrian offensive  against IS [Islamic State, formerly ISIS], Jabhat al-Nusra, and other terrorist groups was successful. “All facts point to the desire of the US and its allies to provide the radicals and extremists with an opportunity to gather their breath, restore their ranks, drag out the bloodshed on Syrian soil and thereby complicate the political settlement,” the ministry said.

Russia has “strongly condemned” the Western missile strikes against Syria, slamming them as “a gross violation of the fundamental principles of international law, [and] an unjustified infringement of the sovereignty of the country.”

Early on Saturday, Washington and its allies unleashed more than 100 missiles on civilian and military facilities in Syria in response to an alleged gas attack in Douma that has been widely blamed on Bashar Assad’s government. Syrian air defense systems intercepted 71 cruise missiles and air-surface missiles fired by the Western coalition, the Russian Defense Ministry said, adding that none of its own air defense units were involved in repelling the attack.

April 14, 2018 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

5 Decades of Lies and War — when will Americans wake up?

Carey Wedler | April 12, 2018

From Vietnam to Syria, if they aren’t lying, they’re grossly incompetent (they’re both). Neither deserves your support.

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https://www.facebook.com/CareyWedler/
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April 13, 2018 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

State Dept claims US has proof Damascus was behind Douma ‘attack,’ but it’s classified

RT | April 14, 2018

The US State Department has claimed to have proof that the Syrian government was the perpetrator of an alleged chemical attack in Douma. It refused to make the evidence public, as the intelligence is “classified.”

State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said on Friday that the US has “a very high level of confidence” that it was the Syrian government that launched an alleged chemical weapons attack on civilians in Douma on April 7. Asked by AP’s Matt Lee if the US can say that it has clear evidence of the Syrian government’s culpability, Nauert responded that while she cannot speak for other nations, “it’s the assessment of the British government, the US government, the French government” that Syria was the culprit.

“I cannot speak on their behalf, but we’ve all have been having conversations and sharing information, intelligence included, and we can say that the Syrian government was behind the attack,” Nauert said. The US assertion relies on “different kind of sources,” including those of its own, she said.

It’s unclear if the strongest-worded attribution of blame by the US so far is based on some newly uncovered evidence. Pressed on whether Washington had obtained some new proof that explicitly points at Damascus’ role in the incident, Nauert did not provide any new details, saying that she is not in a position to divulge the intelligence data.

She went on to criticize “some TV shows” that are calling on the White House to offer some facts in support of the accusations: “a lot of this stuff is classified at this point. We are unable to provide all of this publicly at this moment,” she said.

At the same time, Nauert admitted that the US has, so far, failed to independently determine what substance was used in the alleged chemical attack.

“On Tuesday, when we last met, I talked how we know that it was a chemical weapon that was used in Syria. The exact kind or the mix of that [chemical weapon] we are still looking into.”

At a briefing on Tuesday, Nauert said: “we do know that some sort of a substance was used.”

She also dismissed the statement by the Russian Defense Ministry that the UK government could have pressured the rebel-linked White Helmets group, which was the primary source of the photos and videos from the site of the supposed attack, to stage a provocation in Douma.

On Thursday, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said that Moscow has “evidence that Britain had a direct involvement in arranging this provocation in Eastern Ghouta.” The UK rebuffed the accusations, calling them “grotesque.”

Nauert echoed an earlier statement by White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who said on Friday that Washington has “a very high confidence that Syria was responsible,” while accusing Russia of a “failure” to head off the alleged attack.

April 13, 2018 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

From Skripal to Syria – The Empire’s “New Realities” Are Reaching The End of the Road

By Rob Slane | The Blogmire | April 12, 2018

“That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Thus spake Karl Rove, Deputy Chief of Staff in the Government of George W. Bush.

I do wish people would study Rove’s words more carefully. Judiciously study them. If they did, then whenever the next alleged atrocity occurs and the United States, together with its coalition of supine vassals, starts yelling and hollering 10 minutes later for action to be taken, on the basis of a test-tube full of washing powder, or pictures of injured women and children in a war zone, and the entire media of dutiful stenographers shrieks that “something must be done”, then perhaps we might pause and wonder if we are being played. Instead of falling into an emotional spasm, maybe we would instead reject the deafening drumbeats of war – wars that have a habit of killing immeasurably more women and children than the alleged incidents on which they are based, by the way — and ask ourselves whether “Rove’s Law” has come into play.

As an aside, the West’s interventionist wars remind me of that wonderfully cynical exchange in the film, The Man With Two Brains:

Dr. Hfuhruhurr: “The only time we doctors should accept death is when it’s caused by our own incompetence!”

Dr. Necessiter: “Nonsense! If the murder of twelve innocent people can help save one human life, it will have been worth it!”

Here’s Dr. Necessiter selling us into war in Iraq: “Nonsense! If it costs us the deaths of 500,000 people to topple the evil dictator Saddam Hussein, it will have been worth it!”

Here he is selling us bombs on Libya: “Nonsense! If turning Libya into a failed state, a terrorist’s playground, and causing a mass exodus of refugees is the price for getting rid of Gaddafi, it will have been worth it.”

And here’s Dr Necessiter again, this time trying to sell us into bombing Syria: “Nonsense! Risking a catastrophic clash with a country armed with thousands of nuclear weapons is worth it in order to respond to the alleged deaths of less than a hundred people in a totally unproven chemical weapons attack.”

Behold, the “logic” of the interventionists!

But back to Rove. What was he saying? Three things:

Number one: We – that is the Globalist Deep State, centred in Washington DC – are sovereign over the entire globe and we will do as we please.

Number two: That we don’t follow reality, we create it.

Number three: That we are prepared to do things that will make your jaws drop, your hair stand on end, and your eyes boggle as you wonder what is going on, and while your jaws, your hair and your eyes are busy doing their thing, we will have moved on to create our next reality.

In other words – we are God – and not a kind and merciful God, but a God who lords it over all peoples’, nations and tongues, who tells lies, and then tells more lies to cover up those lies and – when you poor saps are trying to work out what it is we’re really up to – before you know what has happened, those lies and those lies to cover up lies will have become the new reality. We’ll have moved on and the world with it, and the narrative we have created will have been written in the history books, which we ourselves shall write.

The cases of Sergei Skripal and the alleged chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta seem somehow to represent the zenith of this ideology.

I do not know who poisoned Sergei Skripal or for what reason. It could be that the Russian Government was behind it, although this would mean accepting the highly improbable thesis that they decided to target a has-been MI6 spy, who they released from prison eight years ago, using perhaps the dumbest assassination method in the history of the world – an ineffective, slow-operating, “military-grade” nerve agent, which could be traced back to them, and which they smeared on a door handle in rainy Salisbury –, a week or so before a Presidential election, and less than 100 days before they are due to host the World Cup. In other words, the official narrative does not rest on accepting that the Russian state is the epitome of pure evil; it rests on accepting that it is the epitome of insanity and bumbling incompetence.

I do not know what happened in Eastern Ghouta. It could be that the Syrian Government was behind what is alleged to have happened (if it indeed did happen), but this would mean having to accept the thesis that just 24 hours away from completely liberating the last pocket of resistance in Damascus, after the US, the UK and France had all warned that they would attack if chemical weapons were used, just a week or so after the US President, Donald J. Swamp, announced that the US would be pulling out of Syria (which they occupied illegally, by the way), they made the decision to use a weapon that gave them no military advantage whatsoever, but which was practically guaranteed to be used as a pretext for airstrikes against them. In other words, like the Skripal case, the theory does not stand on accepting that the Syrian state is the epitome of pure evil; it stands on accepting that it is the epitome of self-defeating stupidity on an epic scale.

But you see what I’ve done? I’ve fallen right into Karl Rove’s trap, haven’t I? I’m asking questions about whether the narratives in these cases stack up. In the Skripal case, I’ve been judiciously studying reality by asking lots of questions that ought to have occurred to anyone with a keen interest in arriving at the truth (here and here, for instance). I could do the same with the Syrian case, if I had the time.

Yet while I’m doing so, the narrative is moving on. I’m falling into exactly the trap that Karl and his disciples have laid. They want two sorts of people: those who just blindly accept that it was the Russians wot did it, or that it was Assad wot did it; and those who spend their time asking questions about the official explanations. The first group call the second group conspiracy theorists and nutters. The second group call the first group dumb sheeple. And the Globalist Deep State laughs and laughs and laughs as the two groups battle it out to make sense of what has happened, leaving it free to march on to create the next reality. Truly I tell you, these Bolsheviks have learnt their Hegelian Dialectics well.

Now, this is not to rule out that in the Salisbury and Eastern Ghouta cases the official narratives might – just might – be the correct ones. That both Vladimir Putin and Bashar Assad might be the Laurel and Hardy of Geopolitics. Yet it has to be said that whatever else you think about them, neither of them tends to come across in interviews as being what you might call dumb or inept. Nor do either of them give the impression that they have sudden insane impulses to do things which have absolutely no benefit to them, but which hand their enemies massive PR victories.

But this is beside the point. The point is not whether these particular incidents are what the official narrative says they are, or whether they are provocations. It suffices for the “new reality creators” to create their realities on occasion, or perhaps to distort occurrences which they didn’t create, and before you know it you have your two groups battling over events which may be real or fake: the conspiracists – who are studying every event to try to work out the details and the inconsistencies – and the sheeple – who believe that their Government is full of good hearted, white hatted chaps and lasses who would never, ever do anything bad – unlike those orcs over in Mordor.

Rove and Co have basically created a “reality” where truth is no longer discernible, where assertions of guilt are taken as fact, and where holes in these kinds of incidents only serve to divide the people further, so that the Globalist Deep State can move on to create their next reality.

But let’s not get gloomy. The good news is that although they clearly think they can get away with it indefinitely, they can’t. No kingdom or empire built on a mountain of lies can stand indefinitely. They all fall. And can’t you start to sense the signs that the empire’s “new realities” – or what are known as lies in laymen’s terms – are reaching boiling point? Don’t you sense that they have just got too confident and in doing so have begun to get careless? They are making mistakes. And as they do, they are having to resort to bigger and bigger lies to cover up the ones they’ve already told.

Sadly for Rove and Co, but happily for the rest of us, the world doesn’t actually work the way they think it does. Reality — I mean real reality, rather than the phony reality they have created — will catch up sooner or later. I sense that it’s on its way even now. And when it finally comes, the whole rotten edifice that these “history’s actors” have tried to create will crash and burn. Bringing much rejoicing.

April 13, 2018 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Some Dead Children Count More Than Others

By Craig Murray | April 13, 2018

The ever excellent Campaign Against the Arms Trade is back in the English High Court again today in its continuing attempts to ban arms sales to Saudi Arabia. It is against UK law to sell arms to a country which is likely to use them in breach of international humanitarian law, and that Saudi Arabia consistently and regularly uses British weapons to bomb schools, hospitals and civilians is indisputable.

Unfortunately the courts are an instrument of power and control for the 1%, not an impartial resort for justice, so I fear CAAT will not succeed despite the fact their case is undeniably correct.

Part of the British Government’s defence is the close military support it gives to Saudi Arabia, which it claims minimises civilian deaths (it plainly does no such thing). Thousands of children have died in the Yemeni war, most killed by the Saudis and their allies. These war crimes have been documented by the United Nations despite concerted UK and US diplomacy at the UN aimed at downplaying the Saudi crimes. Cluster bombs, white phosphorous and other illegal weapons have frequently been used.

Yemeni dead children very seldom make in into the mainstream media, whereas Syrian children do. But not all Syrian children – those children killed by the jihadist head-choppers the West and its Saudi allies have armed, funded and “advised” do not make the corporate and state media either. Only children allegedly – and the word needs repeating, allegedly – gassed by the Syrian armed forces are apparently worth our attention.

If we really attack because we care about the children, we would be attacking Saudi Arabia to halt its atrocities in Yemen. Instead we are allying with Saudi Arabia – the child killers, UK military support to whom is today being stressed in the High Court – to attack Syria.

Anybody who believes this is anything to do with “humanitarian intervention” is a complete fool.

April 13, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

UK appears to be ‘destroying’ evidence in Skripal case – Russian envoy

RT | April 13, 2018

The UK appears to be pursuing a policy of “destroying evidence” in the case of the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal, the Russian envoy to the UK said during a press conference on Friday.

The accusation came from Alexander Yakovenko, as he was updating the media on the developments in the Salisbury poisoning case. He reiterated Russia’s dismay over the British government’s refusal to allow Russian diplomats access to Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who was also poisoned, saying that from Moscow’s point of view, the two Russian nationals appear to have been abducted by the British authorities.

The ambassador said London’s approach to the high-profile case followed a pattern of crimes, in which the UK chose to classify details from the public and ignore Russia’s request to disclose them.

The latest such case is the death of Russian businessman Nikolay Glushkov on March 12, after the apparent attack on the Skripals, Yakovenko said.

He confirmed Russia’s receipt on Thursday of a classified report from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which the organization sent after confirming Britain’s identification of a toxic agent used in the poisoning. Yakovenko said Moscow is studying it carefully and will make its opinion public when ready. He stressed that Russia’s criticism of the way the UK chose to engage the OPCW in the case did not amount to doubting the merits of the report.

The Russian diplomat also commented on the situation in Syria and Britain’s possible military action there. He advised the UK against taking rash steps in Syria based on a fabricated chemical weapons attack last Saturday, saying it would be similar to the misguided intervention in Iraq in 2003.

He briefed journalists on the latest development in Douma, a town in the suburbs of Damascus, where the alleged attack took place and where Russian military police have been deployed on Thursday. He suggested that the media compared the situation in Douma, which is relatively undamaged after its capture by the Syrian government forces, to that in the city of Raqqa, which was practically obliterated by the US-led coalition and its allies on the ground last year, when they took the city from the jihadist group Islamic State.

April 13, 2018 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , | Leave a comment

OPCW Salisbury Report Confirms Nothing But the Identity of the Chemical

By Craig Murray | April 12, 2018

The word “Russia” does not occur in today’s OPCW report. The OPCW Report says nothing whatsoever about the origin of the chemical which poisoned the Skripals and certainly does not link it in any way to Russia.

The technical ability of Porton Down to identify a chemical has never been in doubt, and the only “finding of the United Kingdom”the OPCW has confirmed is the identity of the chemical.

10. The results of analysis by the OPCW designated laboratories of environmental and
biomedical samples collected by the OPCW team confirm the findings of the United
Kingdom relating to the identity of the toxic chemical that was used in Salisbury and
severely injured three people.

11. The TAV team notes that the toxic chemical was of high purity. The latter is
concluded from the almost complete absence of impurities.

There are scores of countries that chemical could have come from. For the BBC and other mainstream media outlets to pretend that the OPCW has in any sense endorsed Boris Johnson’s claims about Russia is to spread deliberate lies as propaganda. In fact what they have confirmed is simply the finding of Porton Down – and that finding was that it is a chemical which cannot be confirmed as made in Russia.

April 12, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Yulia Skripal Is Plainly Under Duress

By Craig Murray | April 11, 2018

Only the Russians have allowed us to hear the actual voice of Yulia Skripal, in that recorded conversation with her cousin. So the one thing we know for certain is that, at the very first opportunity she had, she called back to her cousin in Russia to let her know what is going on. If you can recall, until the Russians released that phone call, the British authorities were still telling lies that Sergei was in a coma and Yulia herself in a serious condition.

We do not know how Yulia got to make the call. Having myself been admitted unconscious to hospital on several occasions, each time when I came to I found my mobile phone in my bedside cabinet. Yulia’s mobile phone plainly had been removed from her and not returned. Nor had she been given an official one – she specifically told her cousin that she could not call her back on that phone as she had it temporarily. The British government could have given her one to keep on which she could be called back, had they wished to help her.

The most probable explanation is that Yulia persuaded somebody else in the hospital to lend her a phone, without British officials realising. That would explain why the first instinct of the British state and its lackey media was to doubt the authenticity of the call. It would explain why she was able to contradict the official narrative on their health, and why she couldn’t get a return call. It would, more importantly, explain why her family has not been able to hear her voice since. Nor has anybody else.

It strikes me as inherently improbable that, when Yulia called her cousin as her first act the very moment she was able, she would now issue a formal statement through Scotland Yard forbidding her cousin to be in touch or visit. I simply do not believe this British Police statement:

“I was discharged from Salisbury District Hospital on the 9th April 2018. I was treated there with obvious clinical expertise and with such kindness, that I have found I missed the staff immediately.

“I have left my father in their care, and he is still seriously ill. I too am still suffering with the effects of the nerve agent used against us.

“I find myself in a totally different life than the ordinary one I left just over a month ago, and I am seeking to come to terms with my prospects, whilst also recovering from this attack on me.

“I have specially trained officers available to me, who are helping to take care of me and to explain the investigative processes that are being undertaken. I have access to friends and family, and I have been made aware of my specific contacts at the Russian Embassy who have kindly offered me their assistance in any way they can. At the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services, but, if I change my mind I know how to contact them.

“Most importantly, I am safe and feeling better as time goes by, but I am not yet strong enough to give a full interview to the media, as I one day hope to do. Until that time, I want to stress that no one speaks for me, or for my father, but ourselves. I thank my cousin Viktoria for her concern for us, but ask that she does not visit me or try to contact me for the time being. Her opinions and assertions are not mine and they are not my father’s.

“For the moment I do not wish to speak to the press or the media, and ask for their understanding and patience whilst I try to come to terms with my current situation.”

There is also the very serious question of the language it is written in. Yulia Skripal lived part of her childhood in the UK and speaks good English. But the above statement is in a particular type of formal, official English of a high level which only comes from a certain kind of native speaker.

“At the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services” – wrote no native Russian speaker, ever.

Nor are the rhythms or idioms such as would in any way indicate a translation from Russian. Take “I thank my cousin Viktoria for her concern for us, but ask that she does not visit me or try to contact me for the time being. Her opinions and assertions are not mine and they are not my father’s.” Not only is this incredibly cold given her first impulse was to phone her cousin, the language is just wrong. It is not the English Yulia would write and it is awkward to translate into Russian, thus not a natural translation from it.

To put it plainly, as someone who has much experience of it, the English of the statement is precisely the English of an official in the UK security services and precisely not the English of somebody like Yulia Skripal or of a natural translation from Russian.

Yulia is, of course, in protective custody “for her own safety”. At the very best, she is being psychologically force-fed the story about the evil Russian government attempting to poison her with the doorknob, and she is being kept totally isolated from any influence that may reinforce any doubts she feels as to that story. There are much worse alternatives involving threat or the safety of her father. But even at the most benevolent reading of the British authorities’ actions, Yulia Skripal is being kept incommunicado, and under duress.

April 12, 2018 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , | Leave a comment

Russian Embassy doubts statement released by UK police was indeed Yulia Skripal’s

RT | April 12, 2018

The statement released by UK police on behalf of Yulia Skripal appears to be designed to cut her off from outside contact, the Russian Embassy in the UK says. The mission is calling for verification that the statement is genuine.

Scotland Yard earlier issued a statement that was apparently from Yulia Skripal, the daughter of former double agent Sergei Skripal, who are both recovering from poisoning in the UK. British authorities have been accusing Moscow of poisoning the Skripals since day one of the case, allegations that Moscow firmly denies.

“If everything mentioned there is true we cannot but congratulate our compatriot,” the Russian Embassy said in reaction to the Yulia Skripal statement, which it dubbed “an interesting read.”

The embassy then called for verification that the words attributed to Yulia were indeed her own. “With no possibility to verify it, the publication by the Metropolitan Police raises new questions rather than gives answers,” the embassy’s message said. “As before, we would like to make sure that the statement really belongs to Yulia. So far, we doubt it much.”

The statement, in which Yulia Skripal refuses the proffered assistance of the Russian Embassy and asks her cousin Viktoria to avoid trying to contact her, seems to have been “composed in a special way so as to support official statements made by British authorities and at the same time to exclude every possibility of Yulia’s contacts with the outer world – consuls, journalists and even relatives,” the embassy said.

The part where the statement released by the Met Police talks about Yulia having “access to friends and family” has also raised questions. Yulia’s closest relatives, according to the embassy, are her cousin Viktoria and her grandmother Elena, Sergei Skripal’s mother, who live together. Seeing as how Yulia is refusing contacts with Viktoria, it is unclear what family the statement speaks of.

“Particularly amazing is the phrase ‘no one speaks for me’ appearing in a statement which, instead of being read on camera by Yulia herself, is published at Scotland Yard website,” the embassy said. The original statement also says Yulia is “not yet strong enough to give a full interview to the media.”

Before the London police released Yulia Skripal’s supposed statement, reports suggested that she had been moved to a secure, undisclosed location, “thought to be a well-guarded country house.” The Russian diplomatic mission then voiced worry that she was being “held hostage” – which was not alleviated by the release of the official statement.

“To sum up, the document only strengthens suspicions that we are dealing with a forcible isolation of the Russian citizen. If British authorities are interested in assuring the public that this is not the case, they must urgently provide tangible evidence that Yulia is alright and not deprived of her freedom,” the embassy said.

Yulia Skripal and her father had spent several weeks in a coma following their poisoning on March 4 in the city of Salisbury, where Sergei lived after being exchanged in a spy swap in 2010. Yulia and Sergei only recently woke up, though, according to the statement attributed to Yulia, both are still “suffering with the effects of the nerve agent used against us.”

April 12, 2018 Posted by | Deception | , | Leave a comment

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