Lavrov: Doctors at Berlin Clinic Where Navalny Was Treated Found No Signs of Military-Grade Poisons
Sputnik – 05.10.2020
Last month, German authorities announced that a Bundeswehr analysis of Russian opposition blogger Alexei Navalny’s samples found traces of a ‘Novichok’ group nerve agent. Moscow called the allegations odd, pointing out that before Navalny’s transfer to Germany, Russian doctors treating him in Siberia found no signs of any poisons in his system.
Doctors at the Charite university hospital where Alexei Navalny was treated found no evidence from his samples that he was poisoned by any military-grade poison, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.
“Doctors in Omsk did not find any traces of chemical warfare agents, they honestly said this. But I would like to draw your attention that the fact that Charite clinic also did not find any toxic substances in its analyses; instead, they were ‘found’ later in the Bundeswehr’s clinic,” Lavrov said, speaking to members of the Association of European Businesses in Russia on Monday.
“We still do not know: did the French and the Swedes carry out the test themselves, or were they simply given them by the Germans. And the fact that our partners are trying to keep everything a secret, to muddy the waters, is something that worries us greatly. We want to find the truth and we will seek to do so,” the diplomat added.
At the same time, Lavrov said, Moscow has no doubts that the European Union will attempt to slap new sanctions on Russia in connection with the Navalny case, based on a recently created cookie-cutter sanctions policy about alleged violations in the use of chemical weapons, which he noted require no factual basis or large-scale discussion by all sides accused of involvement to implement.
According to Lavrov, Russia’s Western colleagues’ policies, whether in cyberspace or the alleged use of chemical weapons, seem to be aimed at the creation of new institutions outside the United Nations or any other international legal framework, allowing for facts to be presented, guilt to be determined and punishment in the form of sanctions to be doled out without listening to the other side.
On Saturday, the Russian Foreign Ministry complained that its German counterparts had refused to provide the Russian Embassy in Berlin with consular access to Alexei Navalny since he was discharged from the Charite clinic. According to Moscow, Russian prosecutors have sent the German side four requests for legal aid for their probe into Navalny’s alleged poisoning, with none of them receiving a response.
Moscow has also slammed the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) for quietly providing the German side with ‘technical assistance’ on the Navalny case without informing Russia, pointing out that the claims of poisoning being alleged “took place not in Germany, but in Russia,” and that Russia must be party to any objective investigation.
Last week, Navalny accused the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin personally of poisoning him, saying he can’t think of any other explanation for what happened to him. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov shot back, calling the claims “groundless… extremely insulting and unacceptable,” and revealing that Moscow “has information” that Navalny has been cooperating with the Central Intelligence Agency.
On Saturday, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas warned that sanctions against Russia would “be impossible to avoid” “if the results of the German, Swedish and French laboratories are confirmed” by the OPCW.
Dr. Leonid Rink, one of the chemists who helped create the so-called Novichok group of military-grade poisons, told Sputnik that if Navalny really had been poisoned by Novichok, he would have been dead in ten minutes flat, and would never have made it to the Tomsk airport or his plane.
Navalny collapsed onboard a domestic flight from Tomsk to Moscow on August 20, with his plane making an emergency landing in Omsk, where doctors worked for nearly two days straight to stabilize his condition. On August 22, a charter flight took him to the Charite clinic in Berlin. There he gradually recovered before being discharged late last month.
The Navalny Poisoning Hoax. Who Are the Instigators?
By Ludwig Watzal | American Herald Tribune | October 1, 2020
From the start, the alleged Navalny poisoning was riddled with contradictions and should have raised eyebrows by every politician and journalist. Being discharged from the Charité Clinic in Berlin, Navalny went into attack mode against President Vladimir Putin. As it seems, this will be his role designed to him by the intelligence agencies. In a couple of days, the Navalny hype will be over. One can only blame Putin for the alleged poising once. If Navalny had the guts, he would return to his homeland and fight Putin politically.
The whole poisoning hoax stinks to high heaven. If Navalny had really been poisoned, his companions, not to speak of all the other passengers in the plane, would have been poisoned too. None of them was. What a surprise? His “poisoning” was of the same sort as the one of the Skripals. There was nothing. Since their recuperation, they have disappeared. Are they still alive? The fooling of the public works only once, and the British MI5 has a long history of leading the public astray.
There are further inconsistencies in the case. Navalny’s backers even found water bottles in his apartment, which were allegedly also poisoned. How could they bring them openly to Germany? How could the whole Navalny entourage travel to Germany without any restrictions, especially under Corona restrictions? They could even go back and forth. By the way, Navalny was apparently poisoned drinking a cup of tea before boarding a plane, which was to have taken him to Moscow. The plane had to make an emergency landing because Navalny started screaming on board. But the pictures of these incidents seemed staged and unrealistic.
After the landing in Omsk, Navalny was medically treated. Russian doctors found nothing special. All of a sudden, Navalny’s entourage claimed that he should be brought to Berlin. Why Berlin? Why not France, Great Britain, or the United States? As it turned out, the Navalny case’s fallout was the killing of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The first one among the political class to call for an end to Nord Stream 2 was Norbert Röttgen, a mouthpiece of the trans-Atlantic network, severely anti-Russian as another Russophobe German politician Katrin Göring-Eckardt called for a stop to the pipeline. When it goes against Russia, the Greens are at the helm.
Although the Russian government offered its cooperation and demanded proof of the alleged poisoning, the German government did not provide any hard evidence. They pretended that they had sent the evidence to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in Den Haag/Netherlands, but the organization referred the Russian back to the Germans. So far, evidence could not be provided by the Germans, just rumors.
The stop of Nord Stream 2 would damage not only German national interest but also the Russian one. Canceling the project, Germany would have to pay Billions of Euros compensation to the companies, and Germany would lose all credibility as a serious trade partner. For over a year, U. S. President Donald Trump has been putting enormous pressure on the German government to cancel the project. Instead, Germany should buy expensive U. S. fracking gas. If the Germans succumb to U. S. blackmail, it will demonstrate to the world that Germany is still a U. S. colony and not sovereign.
German foreign minister Heiko Maas cut the worse figure. He is the main agitator against Russia. Maas used his video speech at the United Nations to demand that Russia deliver “evidence” of Navalny’s poisoning. Russia can’t contribute anything to it because Navalny wasn’t poisoned. Since Maas was appointed to his job, anti-Russian rhetoric has increased. Together with other politicians from the Christian Democratic Party and the Greens, Germany follows a hostile policy towards Russia. The German side refused to answer three letters of Russia’s request to provide evidence of the “poisoning.” Maas seems to have a complex about his childish appearance. Perhaps that’s why he haves like a snip. If Angela Merkel lets Maas go on like this, the German-Russian relationship will be completely screwed up. A long tradition, established by former Chancellor Willy Brandt and his adviser Egon Bahr will go down the drain. Only the U. S. will profit from such a deterioration in relations.
Ex-OPCW Member Says Syria 2018 Chemical Attacks Report May Not Reflect Actual Events
Sputnik – 29.09.2020
A former lead investigator from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Ian Henderson, said the final report of the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) into the alleged use of toxic chemicals in an attack in Douma, Syria, in 2018, may not reflect what happened on the ground.
Henderson was speaking at an informal meeting of the UN Security Council, organised by the Russian Mission, to openly discuss the treatment of the Syrian chemical dossier, in contrast to traditionally closed gatherings of the council on the issue.
“I speak for myself, but I know there are other Douma FFM inspectors who hold the similar concerns that I do about the manner in which the investigation was controlled, locked-down… [as well as] the findings reflected in the final FMM report”, Henderson said. “We believe that there is more than sufficient information out there today that has demonstrated our points that the findings of the FFM report on Duma may not reflect the actual situation”.
Henderson said the launching of a transparent technical inquiry aimed at clarifying the actual course of events in Douma in 2018 is justified, given the scope of the available information and facts on the alleged incident.
“And this needs to be done in a way that demonstrates scientific rigour and integrity because that currently has not been done”, he said. “perhaps, more importantly, we continue to hope that there’s someone who’s willing and able, someone who has the courage to do something about this”.
The OPCW concluded that chlorine was most likely used in the suspected April 2018 attack on the city, which lies on the northeastern outskirts of the Syrian capital. This led the United States, France and the United Kingdom to launch missile strikes on Syrian targets.
The OPCW relied in its probe on data provided by the White Helmets, a rebel-linked group that bills itself as a volunteer rescue force.
However, the group has faced severe criticism from the Syrian and Russian governments who accuse the organisation of supporting terrorists and staging provocations involving chemical weapons aimed at justifying potential foreign interventions.
In December 2019, whistleblowing website WikiLeaks made public documents from the OPCW on the accuracy of the investigation in Douma.
One is an internal email exchange between a senior OPCW official, Chief of Cabinet Sebastian Braha, and his colleagues regarding a technical assessment by Henderson into allegations that the Syrian government had dropped two gas cylinders in a civilian area of Duma from an aircraft.
Henderson, who was assisting the FFM with information collection in Douma, in particular, found that all evidence from the ground suggest that cylinders were placed there manually and, given that the area was not controlled by Damascus at the time, most likely by no one else but the anti-government rebels.
The final report of the OPCW has no mention of these findings. Henderson faced pressure from the OPCW leadership and was eventually fired.
The False Flag Poisoning of Alexei Navalny
By Max Parry • Unz Review • September 24, 2020
On August 20th, Russian opposition figure and self-styled “anti-corruption” activist Alexei Navalny fell seriously ill while in mid-flight from Tomsk, Siberia to the Russian capital. The Moscow-bound plane was abruptly re-routed to make an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk where the anti-Kremlin politician was subsequently hospitalized for suspected poisoning and placed in a medically-induced coma. Two days later, Navalny was airlifted to Germany in an evacuation arranged by a Berlin-based “human rights” NGO at the request of Pussy Riot spokesman Pyotr Verzilov. His transport on a medically-equipped plane with German specialists was permitted by the Russian authorities who now stand accused of culpability in the alleged attack, all in the midst of the ongoing pandemic.
While the Russian doctors in Omsk (who saved Navalny’s life) maintain they did not find any evidence of chemical weapons substances in his system, upon examination the German government quickly announced that its military lab had discovered “unequivocal evidence” Navalny was poisoned by a Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent and demanded an explanation from the Kremlin — without providing any of said evidence to Moscow or the public, of course. Despite being the supposed victim of an extremely deadly military-grade nerve agent, three weeks later Navalny came out his comatose state and off ventilation, defiantly vowing a return to Russia. Was he ever tested for COVID-19? At this point it seems more likely than this propaganda stunt we are expected to believe.
It is unconvincing precisely because it follows a pattern of improbable events questionably attributed to the Kremlin. As many have noted, the incident strikingly resembles the alleged March 2018 poisoning in Salisbury, England of disgraced former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, visiting from Moscow which caused a similar diplomatic row. Skripal, who had been a double agent for MI6 and served ten years imprisonment for high treason, was exiled to the UK after his sentence in a spy-swap between Russia and Britain in 2010. While residing in southern England, Skripal was reportedly in close contact with a security consultant who worked for the author of the salacious but fabricated dossier on U.S. President Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele — and may have even been the source of its unverified contents.
Skripal and his daughter were discovered unconscious on a park bench, but were said to have been initially contaminated hours earlier by the extremely fast-acting substance applied to the door handle of his residence. Similarly, Alexei Navalny is said to have been contaminated by a water bottle in his hotel room, not in the tea he drank at the Tomsk Bogashevo airport cafe before boarding his flight as originally believed. How is the elapsed time in both of these cases possible? The toxin in Navalny’s case was also not discovered until examination in Germany, meaning a bottle laced with a chemical warfare agent was transported all the way to Berlin? None of those who came to Navalny’s aid or treated him suffered any noxious effects, unlike the Skripals where multiple police officers at least showed minor symptoms. Still, both Navalny and the Skripals fully recovered from their supposed exposure to an extremely lethal toxin considered even more deadly than sarin or VX gas. After their release from the hospital, the Skripals immediately went into hiding which has left the enormous questions surrounding the incident still unresolved two years later. However, the damage was already done as the UK government immediately blamed Moscow and more than 100 Russian diplomats were expelled by Britain and its Western allies.
Months later in June 2018, two British nationals were the victims of an accidental poisoning (one fatally) after they discovered a discarded but unopened perfume bottle containing the same poisonous agent. Then that September, Scotland Yard released CCTV footage of two Russian men alleged to be GRU military intelligence agents in Salisbury at the time of the attack. However, no verifiable evidence was ever provided by the British government showing that the two were responsible, though it was conveniently claimed that the would-be culprits clumsily left vestiges of the fatal chemical agent in their hotel room. So, not only is Russian intelligence incapable of carrying out successful assassinations, but carelessly unable to cover their tracks? The premise was already absurd enough but made even more fanciful by Britain’s refusal to comply with the Chemical Weapons Convention in providing Moscow with requested samples of the toxin which purportedly poisoned the treasonous ex-spook and his daughter. Thus far in the Navalny case, Germany is following the same script.
What a coincidence that the attack comes just as Nord Stream 2, the second line of the massive natural gas pipeline under construction from Russia to Germany opposed by the U.S. and several NATO allies, is near completion. Suddenly, the diplomatic fall-out has put the controversial project in limbo, with Chancellor Angela Merkel and the German government under pressure from Washington to withdraw from the project which would increase Russian influence on Europe’s energy infrastructure and rival the U.S.’s costlier exports. As pointed out by Die Linke’s Dietmar Bartsch, where were the calls to halt the purchase of Saudi oil imports after the grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi? It is clear that the Anglo-Americans are simply desperate to halt the resurgence of Moscow on the international stage, threatening their German counterparts with sanctions as the final sections of the pipeline conveying Russian gas across the Baltic Sea is being constructed. The attack on Navalny could not occur at a more auspicious time for the Atlanticists and a worse time for Moscow.
The notion that Russian President Vladimir Putin would try to assassinate an opposition figure who holds a minuscule 2% support amongst the population, far behind other opponents nonexistent to Western media but the one who just so happens to be favored by Washington, is contrary to any reason or common sense. Not to mention, at the exact moment it would jeopardize a project essential to Russia’s economic growth and frugality, as the pipeline would link Moscow with Western Europe bypassing neighboring transit countries such as the Ukraine (also opposed to Nord Stream 2) which have costly transit fees. Is it really the Russian government who stands to massively benefit from this fiasco? The answer to “cui bono?” could not be more clear: U.S., Saudi and Emirati oil and gas interests, not the Kremlin. Russia was also recently the first nation to develop a COVID-19 vaccine candidate with its Sputnik V registered in August, an international competition that has been heavily politicized by Washington which is eager to cast aspersions on Moscow’s accomplishment. Meanwhile, Germany is also the one Western European country where Washington’s anti-Russian propaganda is falling flat, as recent polls consistently show that the vast majority of Germans don’t see Russia as a threat, likely a result of their high rate of media literacy.
Despite Navalny’s recovery, there are already calls to legislate a ‘Navalny Act’ as a follow-up to the Magnitsky Act, a bipartisan bill previously passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012 under the Obama Administration which sanctioned Russian officials accused of being responsible for the 2009 death of Sergei Magnitsky, an unscrupulous Russian tax lawyer who helped dodgy international financiers like the US-born British tycoon William Browder commit massive tax evasion in Russia. Magnitsky died under mysterious circumstances while in custody awaiting trial for facilitating Browder’s skullduggery and suffering from poor health, with the Russian prison officials first accused of depriving him of medical treatment and then allegedly beating and torturing him to death. The fascinating 2016 documentary The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes explores the case from the perspective of Westernized Putin critic and filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, who through the course of his investigation unexpectedly discovers that the mainstream media narrative of Magnitsky’s death was a fiction concocted by Browder. Suddenly, Nekrasov’s entire perspective on Russia comes into question and the film takes on a metanarrative of the nature of propaganda itself.
What we are being told about Navalny is likely another fairy tale like the implausible story forged by Mr. Browder about the death of the auditor he hired to enrich himself exploiting Russia’s tax loopholes. Incredibly, the American-born investor is the grandson of Earl Browder, the leader of the Communist Party USA during its heyday until his expulsion at the end of World War II. When the wartime US-Soviet alliance fell apart and the Cold War began, the elder Browder proved more loyal to American imperialism than the communist movement and presided over the liquidation of the CPUSA until it was reestablished with his dismissal as General Secretary. Having grown up in a Russian-speaking family, decades later his grandson decided to cash in on the collapse of the former Soviet Union through various investment ventures as manager of the hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management. When Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin and numerous oligarchs went into exile or landed themselves in prison, Bill Browder was forced to flee the country after defrauding the Russian government of millions with the help of the late Mr. Magnitsky.
One of those banished oligarchs, billionaire media tycoon Boris Berezovsky, also died under dubious circumstances in the UK when he was found hanging in his apartment bathroom in Berkshire, England in 2013. Like Magnitsky, Putin and the Russian government were suspected of involvement in Berezovsky’s death by the media without a shred of evidence, even though his suspicious purported “suicide” actually came shortly after expressing a written willingness to return to Russia and reconcile with Putin — which almost certainly would have been a stroke of good luck for Russian counter-intelligence and a threat to the West, not the Kremlin. Berezovsky had been close with a former agent of the Federal Security Service (FSB, the KGB’s successor), Alexander Litvinenko, a defector renowned for claiming he had been ordered by Putin to assassinate Berezovsky and subsequently lived in the UK as a consultant for British intelligence until his own polonium poisoning in 2006, the first of a series of episodes framing Moscow. Consistently, however, in every one of these cases it is never the Kremlin which stands to gain.
There is a reason Putin consistently polls over 70% in favorability with the Russian people and that is his directing the country away from Western domination under the ruinous neoliberal economic policies of his corrupt and inebriated predecessor Boris Yeltsin which auctioned off the former state-owned assets to foreign investors such as Browder and oligarchs like Berezovsky. Meanwhile, Navalny has a level of support well under 5%, with recent polls placing him behind the Communist Party’s Pavel Grudinin and the ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky. While Navalny’s own rhetoric has shifted over the years, he has controversially maintained his own cozy relationship with ethnic nationalists who make up a significant amount of his right-wing populist base, even co-organizing annual marches dominated by racist skinheads.
Navalny infamously coined the slogan “Stop Feeding the Caucasus!” advocated by xenophobic nationalists calling for the defunding and secession of the Muslim-majority North Caucasus from Russia, while making frequent Islamophobic statements and stoking anti-immigrant sentiments against Central Asians. You would never know this reading Western media who have completely sanitized Navalny’s politics (if they ever address them at all), while they remain obsessed with the perceived ingratiation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin even though the former’s politics have far more in common with Navalny than the Russian President. Given the U.S. support for far right nationalists in the 2014 anti-Russian coup d’etat in Ukraine, Washington has no qualms about backing fascists to undermine Moscow.
In 1831, Russia’s most famous and revered poet, Alexander Pushkin, composed “To the Slanderers of Russia”, a patriotic ode in response to members of the French parliament who were advocating for a military intervention to assist the Polish uprising against the Russian Empire. Pushkin asserted that the Polish uprising was an inter-slavic “ancient, domestic dispute”, while the Poles considered it an issue of national independence which their European allies were eager to exploit against Moscow. For the great Russian writer, the Polish alliance with the tyrant and invader Napoleon was unforgivable. He also reportedly communicated to General Alexander von Benckendorff, the chief of the Tsarist secret police assigned to censor and surveil him, that the Europeans were still bitter over the failed French invasion of Russia in 1812 and had not yet attacked with weapons but were doing so with “daily mad slander.”
Fast forward nearly 200 years later and little has changed in Russia-West relations. The only thing that has arguably transformed is Russia’s standing on the world stage following the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 and the Soviet Union almost 75 years later, the latter of which was masterminded by a Polish-born National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose Russophobic worldview was a product of the deep-seated “ancient, domestic dispute” Pushkin wrote of a century earlier. Contrary to the Western portrayal of the resurgence of Moscow in the new millennia under Vladimir Putin as neo-tsarist expansionism, post-Soviet Russia is actually a relatively weak capitalist state that has found itself a target of regime change by the West which seeks the colonization and balkanization of Eastern Europe.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 caused a spike in oil prices that generated huge profits for Chevron and ExxonMobil, but also had the unintended consequence of benefiting Russia’s state-run oil industry just as Putin was re-nationalizing its energy assets and banishing financial criminals like Browder and Berezovsky. While its strength and influence has certainly been restored, its foreign investments remain low even in the Ukraine where Moscow has been accused of territorial expansion with the so-called “annexation” of Crimea, where the mostly Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainian population actually voted to join its neighbor in a referendum. Russia may no longer be an empire (or communist), but yet it remains in the crosshairs of Western imperialism, whose political leaders and subservient corporate media are still conducting the “mad slander” that Pushkin opined.
Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His writing has appeared widely in alternative media. Max may be reached at maxrparry@live.com
Why Bob Woodward’s ‘Rage’ is a lie built on a lie, and what Trump vs ‘Military Messiah Syndrome’ really is about
By Scott Ritter | RT | September 16, 2020
Bob Woodward’s new insider account of the Trump administration, ‘Rage’, details the multi-faceted controversies surrounding President Trump’s approach to governance – none more so than his relationship with the military.
Bob Woodward is a legendary reporter whose talent for getting insiders to speak about the most sensitive matters in government dates back to Watergate and the Nixon presidency. His most recent presidential expose, ‘Rage’, touches on a wide range of controversies, from the coronavirus pandemic to issues relating to war, and the promise of war.
It is Trump’s tortured relationship with the military that stands out the most, especially as told through the eyes of former Secretary of Defense Jim ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, a retired marine general. It is clear that Bob Woodward spent hours speaking with Mattis – the insights, emotions and internal voice captured in the book show a level of intimacy that could only be reached through in-depth interviews, and Woodward has a well-earned reputation for getting people to speak to him.
The book makes it clear that Mattis viewed Trump as a threat to the US’ standing as the defender of a rules-based order – built on the back of decades-old alliances – that had been in place since the end of the Second World War.
It also makes it clear that Mattis and the military officers he oversaw placed defending this order above implementing the will of the American people, as expressed through the free and fair election that elevated Donald Trump to the position of commander-in-chief. In short, Mattis and his coterie of generals knew best, and when the president dared issue an order or instruction that conflicted with their vision of how the world should work, they would do their best to undermine this order, all the while confirming to the president that it was being followed.
The military is trapped in an inherited reality divorced from the present
This trend was on display in Woodward’s telling of Trump’s efforts to forge better relations with North Korea. At every turn, Mattis and his military commanders sought to isolate the president from the reality on the ground, briefing him only on what they thought he needed to know, and keeping him in the dark about what was really going on.
In a telling passage, Woodward takes us into the mind of Jim Mattis as he contemplates the horrors of a nuclear war with North Korea, and the responsibility he believed he shouldered when it came to making the hard decision as to whether nuclear weapons should be used or not. Constitutionally, the decision was the president’s alone to make, something Mattis begrudgingly acknowledges. But in Mattis’ world, he, as secretary of defense, would be the one who influenced that decision.
Mattis, along with the other general officers described by Woodward, is clearly gripped with what can only be described as the ‘Military Messiah Syndrome’.
What defines this ‘syndrome’ is perhaps best captured in the words of Emma Sky, the female peace activist-turned adviser to General Ray Odierno, the one-time commander of US forces in Iraq. In a frank give-and-take captured by Ms. Sky in her book ‘The Unravelling’, Odierno spoke of the value he placed on the military’s willingness to defend “freedom” anywhere in the world. “There is,” he said, “no one who understands more the importance of liberty and freedom in all its forms than those who travel the world to defend it.”
Ms. Sky responded in typically direct fashion: “One day, I will have you admit that the [Iraq] war was a bad idea, that the administration was led by a radical neocon program, that the US’s standing in the world has gone down greatly, and that we are far less safe than we were before 9/11.”
Odierno would have nothing of it. “It will never happen while I’m the commander of soldiers in Iraq.”
“To lead soldiers in battle,” Ms. Sky noted, “a commander had to believe in the cause.” Left unsaid was the obvious: even if the cause was morally and intellectually unsound.
This, more than anything, is the most dangerous thing about the ‘Military Messiah Syndrome’ as captured by Bob Woodward – the fact that the military is trapped in an inherited reality divorced from the present, driven by precepts which have nothing to with what is, but rather by what the military commanders believe should be. The unyielding notion that the US military is a force for good becomes little more than meaningless drivel when juxtaposed with the reality that the mission being executed is inherently wrong.
The ‘Military Messiah Syndrome’ lends itself to dishonesty and, worse, to self-delusion. It is one thing to lie; it is another altogether to believe the lie as truth.
No single general had the courage to tell Trump allegations against Syria were a hoax
The cruise missile attack on Syria in early April 2017 stands out as a case in point. The attack was ordered in response to allegations that Syria had dropped a bomb containing the sarin nerve agent on a town – Khan Shaykhun – that was controlled by Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic militants.
Trump was led to believe that the 59 cruise missiles launched against Shayrat Airbase – where the Su-22 aircraft alleged to have dropped the bombs were based – destroyed Syria’s capability to carry out a similar attack in the future. When shown post-strike imagery in which the runways were clearly untouched, Trump was outraged, lashing out at Secretary of Defense Mattis in a conference call. “I can’t believe you didn’t destroy the runway!”, Woodward reports the president shouting.
“Mr. President,” Mattis responds in the text, “they would rebuild the runway in 24 hours, and it would have little effect on their ability to deploy weapons. We destroyed the capability to deploy weapons” for months, Mattis said.
“That was the mission the president had approved,” Woodward writes, clearly channeling Mattis, “and they had succeeded.”
The problem with this passage is that it is a lie. There is no doubt that Bob Woodward has the audio tape of Jim Mattis saying these things. But none of it is true. Mattis knew it when he spoke to Woodward, and Woodward knew it when he wrote the book.
There was no confirmed use of chemical weapons by Syria at Khan Shaykhun. Indeed, the forensic evidence available about the attack points to the incident being a false flag effort – a successful one, it turns out – on the part of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamists to provoke a US military strike against Syria. No targets related to either the production, storage or handling of chemical weapons were hit by the US cruise missiles, if for no other reason than no such targets could exist if Syria did not possess and/or use a chemical weapon against Khan Shaykhun.
Moreover, the US failed to produce a narrative of causality which provided some underlying logic to the targets that were struck at Khan Shaykhun – “Here is where the chemical weapons were stored, here is where the chemical weapons were filled, here is where the chemical weapons were loaded onto the aircraft.” Instead, 59 cruise missiles struck empty aircraft hangars, destroying derelict aircraft, and killing at least four Syrian soldiers and up to nine civilians.
The next morning, the same Su-22 aircraft that were alleged to have bombed Khan Shaykhun were once again taking off from Shayrat Air Base – less than 24 hours after the US cruise missiles struck that facility. President Trump had every reason to be outraged by the results.
But the President should have been outraged by the processes behind the attack, where military commanders, fully afflicted by ‘Military Messiah Syndrome’, offered up solutions that solved nothing for problems that did not exist. Not a single general (or admiral) had the courage to tell the president that the allegations against Syria were a hoax, and that a military response was not only not needed, but would be singularly counterproductive.
But that’s not how generals and admirals – or colonels and lieutenant colonels – are wired. That kind of introspective honesty cannot happen while they are in command.
Misleading the American public
Bob Woodward knows this truth, but he chose not to give it a voice in his book, because to do so would disrupt the pre-scripted narrative that he had constructed, around which he bent and twisted the words of those he interviewed – including the president and Jim Mattis. As such, ‘Rage’ is, in effect, a lie built on a lie. It is one thing for politicians and those in power to manipulate the truth to their advantage. It’s something altogether different for journalists to report something as true that they know to be a lie.
On the back cover of ‘Rage’, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian Robert Caro is quoted from a speech he gave about Bob Woodward. “Bob Woodward,” Caro notes, “a great reporter. What is a great reporter? Someone who never stops trying to get as close to the truth as possible.”
After reading ‘Rage’, one cannot help but conclude the opposite – that Bob Woodward has written a volume which pointedly ignores the truth. Instead, he gives voice to a lie of his own construct, predicated on the flawed accounts of sources inflicted with ‘Military Messiah Syndrome’, whose words embrace a fantasy world populated by military members fulfilling missions far removed from the common good of their fellow citizens – and often at conflict with the stated intent and instruction of the civilian leadership they ostensibly serve. In doing so, Woodward is as complicit as the generals and former generals he quotes in misleading the American public about issues of fundamental importance.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter
Berlin struggles to answer RT’s question on fate of Navalny’s mysterious associate who fled Russia for Germany
RT | September 15, 2020
When asked by RT, German government representatives failed to explain the mystery surrounding Alexey Navalny’s associate M. Pevchikh, who was with him at the time of the alleged poisoning and fled for Germany shortly.
German government spokespeople were grilled by RT Deutsch during a press conference on Monday. The officials, however, failed to provide any actual answer about the woman identified by Russian authorities as Marina Pevchikh.
“I can’t tell you anything about this. We must not forget that an attempt was made on the life of Mr. Navalny with the use of a poisonous substance. But I can’t tell you anything about the location of an individual,” Steffen Seibert stated.
The associate of the Kremlin critic was reportedly together with Navalny in Tomsk before his alleged poisoning. Unlike all other individuals who interacted with him on that day, she did not cooperate with Russian investigators and fled the country to Germany.
Pevchikh has spoken on the matter with Meduza, a Latvia-based Russian language news site, claiming she was never approached by the police. She also said her name is actually Maria, not ‘Marina’.
German officials have also failed to explain how a Russian citizen managed to obtain a permit for entering the country that fast. Still, little is actually known about Pevchikh, who is believed to hold a UK residence permit – or even citizenship. Moreover, only a few photos of her exist, despite her close association and repeated trips alongside Navalny, who is a very public figure.
The saga of the Navalny ‘poisoning’ kicked off on August 20, when he fell ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. After an emergency landing in Omsk, a Siberian city 2,000 km east of the Russian capital, he was taken to a local hospital in an unresponsive condition.
The opposition figure was flown to Berlin’s Charite clinic two days later, where he is currently being treated. While Russian doctors have found no traces of toxic substances in samples collected from Navalny, their German counterparts have claimed he was poisoned with a variant of the infamous nerve agent family ‘Novichok’. Creators of that family of toxic substances have already said his symptoms did not correspond with the exposure to the agent, however.
Germany claims French & Swedish labs ‘confirmed’ Navalny’s Novichok poisoning, as Macron labels incident ‘attempted murder’
RT | September 14, 2020
The German government claimed on Monday that the presence of a substance from the Novichok family of poisons in the system of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny has now been confirmed by three different laboratories.
Two of them are its European Union partners France and Sweden, according to Berlin, which says it has brought in the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to analyze the samples. Officials renewed their demand that Russia explain the incident.
“The federal government involved the OPCW in the analysis of evidence from the Navalny case. The OPCW took samples from Navalny and took the necessary steps to study them in its laboratories,” a German government statement read. “The federal government has also asked its European partners France and Sweden to conduct an independent study. The results of these tests are now available and confirm the German evidence. Independent of the ongoing OPCW investigations, three laboratories have now independently demonstrated the presence of a nerve agent from the Novichok group as the cause of Mr. Navalny’s poisoning.”
The head of German intelligence, Bruno Kahl, said last week that the poison used was stronger than previously known. This raised eyebrows in Russia, given that previous variants of Novichok were supposed to have been devastatingly lethal, and Navalny has survived his alleged poisoning.
“We again call on Russia to explain what happened. We are in close contact with our European partners regarding further steps,” the statement continued.
Meanwhile, after the French tests, French state-run news wire AFP reported that President Emmanuel Macron urged his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to urgently shed light on what he called the “attempted murder” of Navalny.
On September 9, the German Ministry of Defense announced that samples taken from Navalny had been transferred to the OPCW. Moscow has complained about a lack of cooperation from Berlin.
On August 20, a plane carrying Navalny made an emergency landing in Omsk after he suddenly became unwell on a flight from Siberia to Moscow. The anti-corruption activist was taken to hospital, placed in an induced coma, and put on a ventilator. On August 22, he was flown to Germany for treatment.
German doctors said on August 24 that they had found signs of Navalny having been poisoned with substances from the cholinesterase inhibitors group. They added that there was no threat to his life, but there was a possibility there would be long-term effects on his nervous system.
A Truly Poisonous Foreign Policy: A Ridiculous Proposal from The New York Times
By Philip Giraldi | American Herald tribune | September 13, 2020
If one had been reading America’s leading newspapers and magazines over the past several weeks the series of featured stories suggesting that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is some kind of latter day Lucrezia Borgia would have been impossible to avoid. Putin, who was simultaneously being branded as some kind of totalitarian monster, apparently does not just go around chopping off heads. Instead, he prefers to slip military grade poison into people’s tea or wipes it onto their doorknobs. The case of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in England is being cited as evidence that poisoning is a routine way of cleaning out the closets, so to speak, together with that of Aleksandr Litvinenko, who died in England in 2006 under mysterious circumstances after reportedly drinking a radioactive isotope that had been placed into his cup of tea while dining at a sushi restaurant in London. Apparently the raw fish had nothing to do with it.
There are, of course, parts of the story that just don’t fit no matter how hard one tries. The Skripals, father and daughter, lived in Salisbury within walking distance of Britain’s chemical and biological weapons lab located at Porton Down, an option for poisoning that was never fully explored. And there was no real reason to kill them in 2018 as they no longer posed any threat to Russian interests, having escaped [in a spy swap] to England twelve years before. In fact, they did not die, which in itself seems odd since the lethal agent was eventually reported by the British to have been Novichok, which may have been smeared on their from door latch. Novichok is designed for battlefield use and reputedly kills instantly.
Poisoning is certainly a convenient short cut when one is unable or unwilling to persevere with the basic principle of politics among nations, often referred to as Diplomacy 101. The first rule in Diplomacy 101 is that you prioritize your interests so that you are not wasting your time and energy by pursuing objectives that are either essentially inconsequential or even meaningless at the expense of authentic vital national interests. By all accounts, Vladimir Putin is an astute politician who would recognize that killing political opponents is counter-productive. Far better to let them live to demonstrate that Russia is truly a country that allows dissent.
At the same time, if one wants to witness ignorance and hubris combined in news reporting, at its worst, it is only necessary to journey through the stories on Russia and Putin that comes out of the strange world inhabited by the punditry at newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post.
Bret Stephens, a self-proclaimed conservative voice at the New York Times, makes no attempt to conceal his hostility to nations like Russia, China and Iran. His latest foray into the unknown is to advocate congressional legislation to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin. He calls it the “Navalny Act.” The eponymous Navalny is Alexei Navalny, a leading Russian dissident who is currently in Germany being treated for what has been described as a poisoning carried out by unknown persons using a somewhat unidentifiable poison for an unknown objective, which is presumed to be killing him as he is a critic of the Putin regime.
Stephens advocates a law by Congress that would empower the U.S. government to both initiate and increase sanctions while also placing travel bans on those individuals who might be implicated in the claimed poisoning of Navalny. It is, in effect, direct interference in a foreign government’s domestic activities, which might have the consequence of inviting foreign governments and the U.N. to start inquiring into just how the U.S. does business. Stephens goes beyond sanctions and travels by further advocating linking his Navalny Act to the Senate’s proposed Defending American Security From Kremlin Aggression Act, or DASKA, that is being promoted by none less than Lindsey Graham. It would require inter alia that intelligence agencies issue available to the public reports on Vladimir Putin’s personal wealth.
There are inevitably a number of problems with the blame Putin narrative. As Israel Shamir observed shortly after the fact, it was at first by no means completely clear if Navalny was actually poisoned at all. He fell ill while flying from Siberia to Moscow and was tested for poisons before it being determined that he might have suffered a diabetic attack. When in Germany for treatment, a mysterious water bottle was produced by his family that the Bundeswehr labs are now claiming had traces of Novichok on its surface. If Novichok truly were on the bottle Navalny, his family and the air crew would all be dead, as well as the Bundeswehr technicians.
If Putin was behind the poisoning of a prominent dissident, it would have served no purpose beyond freeing oneself up from a political nuisance, so there would have been little in the way of motive. Quite the contrary, as Russia is, in fact, in the final stages of setting up the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project with Germany, which with be highly profitable to both countries and is being strongly opposed by the Trump regime.
The White House has been trying hard to kill the project on “national security grounds” to benefit potential U.S. gas suppliers, so much for Trump being a tool of Putin. That rather suggests that the U.S. might have more motive than the Kremlin to poison Navalny, namely to create a cause celebre damning Putin. At the moment, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is in fact reported to be hesitant about completing the project due to the Navalny furor and pressure from Washington.
Interestingly, Stephens quotes his good friend Bill Browder, who was enthusiastic about the prospects for a new piece of legislation to beat Putin over the head with. Browder, the original darling of the war party who has described himself as Vladimir Putin’s “number one enemy,” was the driving force behind much of the original legislation to punish Russia, but his story has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese.
Browder is much loved by Congress as he embodies Russo-phobia. He is a major hedge fund figure who, inter alia, is an American by birth. He renounced his U.S. citizenship in 1997 in exchange for British citizenship to avoid paying federal taxes on his worldwide income. He is what used to be referred to as an oligarch, having set up shop in Russia in 1999 as Hermitage Capital Management Fund, a hedge fund registered in tax havens Guernsey and the Cayman Islands. It focused on “investing” in Russia, taking advantage initially of the loans-for-shares scheme under Russia’s drunkard President Boris Yeltsin, and then continuing to profit greatly during the early years of Vladimir Putin. By 2005 Hermitage was the largest foreign investor in Russia.
Similar to the proposed Navalny Act and central to the tale of what Browder really represents is the Magnitsky Act, which the U.S. Congress passed into law to sanction individual Kremlin officials for their treatment of alleged whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, arrested and imprisoned in Russia. Browder has sold a narrative which basically says that he and his “lawyer” Sergei Magnitsky uncovered massive tax fraud and, when they attempted to report it, were punished by a corrupt police force and magistracy, which had actually stolen the money. Magnitsky was arrested and died in prison, allegedly murdered by the police to silence him.
The Magnitsky Act asserts American “rights” to punish crimes occurring anywhere in the world, a right that is claimed by no other nation. By it, the U.S. asserted its willingness to punish foreign governments for human rights abuses. The Act, initially limited to Russia, has now been expanded by virtue of 2016’s Global Magnitsky Act, which enabled U.S. sanctions worldwide. The proposed Navalny Act coupled with Lindsay Graham’s DASKA would together go well beyond even that bit of draconian legislation.
The basis for the Magnitsky Act was essentially fraudulent, just as might turn out to be the case with the Navalny story. Contrary narrative to that provided by Browder concedes that there was indeed a huge fraud related to as much as $230 million in unpaid Russian taxes, but that it was not carried out by corrupt officials. Instead, it was deliberately ordered and engineered by Browder with Magnitsky, who was actually an accountant, personally developing and implementing the scheme, using multiple companies and tax avoidance schemes to carry out the deception.
The pending legislation dreamed up by Stephens is undeniably driven by extreme hatred of Putin and of Russia, using contrived and evidence-free scenarios to condemn the Russian government for crimes that do not even make sense from a risk-gain perspective. The Magnitsky Myth alone has already done more even than the contrived Russiagate to launch and sustain a dangerous new Cold War between a nuclear-armed United States and a nuclear-armed Russia.
It would perhaps not be too off base to suggest that the Navalny poisoning has the smell of a possible false flag operation by the U.S. with the possible collusion of anti-Russian elements in Germany. Moscow had no real motive to kill Navalny while the White House is certainly keen on terminating Nord Stream 2. That the U.S. media also continues to be attracted to schemes like Stephens’ is symptomatic of just how far the Russia-phobia current in America and Europe has robbed people of their ability to see what important even when it is right in front of them. Good relations with Russia are more important than either getting involved in Moscow’s politics by validating Navalny or selling gas. To suggest that yet more foreign meddling as advocated by Brent Stephens of the New York Times could well lead to tragedy for all of us would be an understatement.
Merkel Saves Nord Stream 2 With a Cunning Trick
By Gevorg Mirzayan | Stalker Zone | September 10, 2020
The German Chancellor said that the fate of the most important Russian gas pipeline “Nord Stream 2” will be decided not by Germany, but by the European Union as a whole. This is how she sees the response to the situation with Aleksey Navalny. It may seem that this is a terrible omen for the gas pipeline, which has already seen billions of euros invested into it for construction. But what did Angela Merkel really mean?
The fate of Nord Stream 2 was again in question. No sooner had the project’s supporters celebrated the removal of the Danish obstacle (Copenhagen, after much delay, gave permission for the pipe to be laid through its territorial waters) than Germany, which until recently was an advocate for construction and one of the main beneficiaries of construction, began to seemingly make obstacles.
Berlin, dissatisfied with the position of Moscow in the case of Aleksey Navalny, intends to put the question of a possible curtailment of the project to a pan-European discussion. Why does Angela Merkel want to close “Nord Stream 2” – and does she in general want to?
Legacy
Germany has long called for putting an end to “Nord Stream 2”, which in the understanding of a number of western activists “increases Europe’s dependence on Russian energy carriers”. They did not even require Angela Merkel to deliver a funeral speech over it. “The easiest option for Germany would be to simply withdraw its support for Nord Stream 2, allowing American and European critics to kill it,” the BBC writes. And now, against the background of the Navalny case, the aggressiveness of the project’s opponents has increased by an order of magnitude.
Until recently, it seemed that they were banging their heads against the wall of German pragmatism. Germany’s position on Nord Stream 2 was really reinforced concrete: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she was dissatisfied with the lack of cooperation with Moscow in the case of the “poisoning of Aleksey Navalny”, but was not going to abandon Nord Stream 2 because of this. After all, as German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas correctly notes, “those who call for the cancellation of the project should understand the consequences of such a step”.
Firstly, Berlin needs Nord Stream 2 from an economic point of view. “Germany has a very weak position in terms of energy. They are closing a lot of power plants – nuclear, coal,” says Donald Trump. Germany and the EU do not have reliable suppliers of cheap gas that are an alternative to Russia. In addition to getting cheap blue fuel (much needed for the export-oriented economy of Germany), Germany will earn good money on the transit of Russian gas, becoming a hub country.
“If the project is stopped, the German consumer will pay for it,” said Klaus Ernst, a member of the Bundestag from the Die Linke party. In addition, Berlin is also thinking about the security of Europe under its patronage – the internal political situation in Ukraine is deteriorating, and no one can guarantee that the militants not controlled by Kiev will not decide to stop the gas export of the “aggressor country” to Europe. Well, or threaten to stop if the EU does not issue another loan to Kiev.
Finally, the issue of reputation is also important. Angela Merkel was not just a supporter of Nord Stream 2, but also a lawyer. She defended the project against those who advocated abandoning infrastructure projects with “Putin’s Russia” – human rights activists, urban lunatics, agents of influence of the US. If now, because of the Navalny case, Merkel changes her position on the “stream”, then she will be criticised for political short-sightedness.
Moreover, by both opponents of Nord Stream 2 (for catching on too late) and supporters of the project, who are dissatisfied with the fact that Angela Merkel has called into question Germany’s energy security because of some political matter. Not to mention the fact that it caused serious damage to German business (Uniper and Wintershall invested almost a billion euros each in Nord Stream 2). And since Frau Chancellor leaves her post at the end of 2021, it is important for her who she will remain in history.
“It all depends on the Russians”
However, Angela Merkel’s pragmatism seemed to be beginning to bend under the pressure of numerous critics and human rights activists calling for “punishing Putin for another poisoning of an opponent”. In their opinion, Germany is the leader of the European Union and (against the background of Donald Trump’s actual refusal to “protect freedom around the world”) a potential leader of the entire liberal community, so it has no right to stay away from the Navalny case. Therefore, Angela Merkel announced the possibility of imposing sanctions against Nord Stream 2 ,and, according to media reports, intends to initiate a pan-European response to the case of Aleksey Navalny. And gather all the EU countries together to decide how to respond to Russia’s behaviour – and part of this reaction may be the suspension of Nord Stream 2.
This suspension will be a serious blow to Moscow. After all, this is not just about an important infrastructure project – there are much bigger things at stake. “The curtailment of Nord Stream 2 will send a clear signal with long-term consequences: German business will leave the Russian market even faster, and Vladimir Putin’s attempts to modernise Russia with the economic assistance of EU countries will finally turn to dust,” writes Deutsche Welle correspondent Miodrag Soric. At the same time, as they make it clear in Berlin, the blow can be avoided. “Our further actions depend on the behaviour of the Russians,” explains German Health Minister Jens Spahn.
“I hope the Russians won’t force us to change our position on Nord Stream 2,” says Heiko Maas, alluding to the fact that the Kremlin is expected to fulfil European demands concerning the Navalny case, and that they are waiting for prompt implementation, and “not by the end of the year or even within a few months”. These demands are very simple and not burdensome – not taking the blame, but just admitting the fact of poisoning, as well as starting an investigation.
Why shouldn’t they be implemented?
One of the reasons is as old as the Russian-west conflict. Moscow does not want to create a dangerous precedent for itself. The Kremlin, in fact, is being forced to admit a politically motivated accusation – after all, the Bundeswehr, whose laboratory declared “the indisputable fact of Navalny’s poisoning”, refused to provide the Russian authorities with any material evidence, citing “the secrecy of the methods and procedures used”.
If Russia now accepts this position on faith under the threat of sanctions, then the inspired western partners will threaten the same sanctions and issue other ultimatums: non-interference in the affairs of Belarus, withdrawal from Syria, etc. And this is not to mention the organisation and information support of other provocations that should be expected before the difficult political transit in Russia in 2024. If the blackmailer issues an ultimatum, the only way to escape from it is to refuse to fulfil any, even the most insignificant demands.
Divergence?
In addition, it makes no sense for Russia to make concessions to Berlin, because the position of Angela Merkel has never changed. Germany, as before, is not going to close Nord Stream 2 – it just behaves more elegantly and cunningly. Yes, it is partly bluffing for the sake of forcing Moscow to make concessions – but at the same time it may be an elegant attempt by Frau Chancellor to pass between the European trickles. By putting the issue up for European discussion, Angela Merkel is calling out those who support punishing Russia, confirming her political leadership – and at the same time putting a tricky block on accepting any tough sanctions.
The fact is that decisions at such meetings should be made by consensus. And if Angela Merkel had raised the question of approving the construction of Nord Stream 2, she would not have received a green light – after all, a number of EU countries (Poland, the Baltic states) are categorically opposed to the implementation of this infrastructure project. However, Frau Merkel (apparently) will ask about something else – should Russia’s punishment for the Navalny case be extended to Nord Stream 2? And here one should not expect any consensus on the completion of the project – the positions of the European countries are too different.
Recall that the pan-European decision concerning the Skripal case was only the collective expulsion of a certain number of Russian diplomats.
And this is despite the fact that back then the grounds for sanctions were much more serious than now. Firstly, there were at least some grounds for blaming Russia for what happened – there was a recording of “Petrov and Boshirov” arriving in Salisbury, as well as information provided to the media that these people work for the Russian special services. Secondly, it was about the use of weapons of mass destruction on the territory of the European Union, which can be interpreted as an attack by the Russian Federation on European citizens. Whilst here we are talking at best about poisoning – without any evidence of Russian guilt. And Moscow can only be accused of unwillingness to take Europe’s word for it. The most important infrastructure projects are not stopped for this by respected countries.
Angela Merkel’s proposal has another advantage for Russia – it protects (at least for a while) Nord Stream 2 from threats from other EU states. There is a risk that some less conscious countries (for example, Denmark) may take their own sanctions against the project. For example, revoke permission to lay a pipe through their waters. Bringing the issue to a pan-European discussion puts unilateral sanctions on pause.
And since Navalny is not dead, but is on the mend, time will cool the hot European heads, and the idea of blocking Nord Stream 2 will go off the agenda. At least for a while.
Navalny False-Flag Authors Invent New Twist to Cover Lies
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 8, 2020
So now the Navalny poison episode takes on a new twist with German military intelligence subsequently claiming they found traces of Novichok on a bottle of water the Russian dissident had purportedly been drinking from. Rather, it sounds more like the authors of this false-flag operation have “bottled” – meaning became unnerved by the absurdities inherent in their own narrative.
Last week the German government announced that a Bundeswehr military laboratory had detected Novichok in the body fluids of Sergei Navalny. That promptly led to charges that the Kremlin was responsible for the attempted murder of Navalny using the Soviet-era nerve poison.
The trouble for the German side was that their narrative soon ran into contradictions from the Russian toxicologists who first treated Navalny when he apparently fell ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow on August 20. The Russian medics said they had tested Navalny for a whole range of poisons, including organophosphate-type chemicals which attack the nervous system. The Russian doctors affirmed they found no poison traces. They concluded Navalny’s coma was induced by an existing medical condition, presumably diabetes. Furthermore, the doctors at the hospital in Omsk where Navalny was taken to on August 20, said they have original samples of his body fluids.
It’s the latter detail which seems to have obliged the Germans to elaborate their narrative with the new element of a poisoned bottle of water. If indeed the Russians have Navalny’s biological samples showing no presence of toxins then the German version falls apart as a fabrication. That could only mean that the claimed detection of Novichok by the Germans was the result of deliberate contamination of his body fluids while he was being treated in the hospital in Berlin where he was airlifted to on August 22 from Russia.
It is reported by Der Spiegel that Navalny’s family relatives kept the alleged bottle after he fell sick on the flight from the Siberian city Tomsk. They purportedly did not hand the bottle over to the Russian toxicologists in Omsk, but rather provided the bottle instead to the Germans when Navalny arrived in Berlin two days later.
This “bottle twist” is a convenient and necessary foil to avoid the potentially damning contradiction from the Russian side. The Germans can now claim to have evidence that was not available to the Russians.
But such a ploy creates more questions that still make the German narrative implausible, if not absurd.
If Novichok was used in poisoning Navalny, the 44-year-old dissident would most likely be dead by now. Also, the aides and flight attendants who came into close contact with him during his flight would have shown symptoms of poisoning. It is inconceivable that a bottle contaminated with the deadly nerve agent could have been transported by Navalny’s family to Germany without them being stricken.
The strange Navalny affair has an unerring resemblance to the equally outlandish Skripal affair. Yet the latter is cited as a precedent for the former in order to “substantiate” incrimination of Russia. The alleged Novichok weapon seems to have an amazing ability to lose its deadly potency on bystanders. The immediate victims apparently go into mysterious comas and are not seen or heard of again in public, detained in secret by the British and now German government. There is also the curious introduction of bottles in both cases: the perfume bottle which allegedly conveyed the Novichok weapon in the Skripal incident in England in March 2018, and now the water bottle in the Navalny incident.
As with the alleged assassination attempt on MI6 double agent Sergei Skripal, the latest incident involving Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny is undoubtedly a false-flag provocation to foment Western sanctions and hostility against Moscow.
Immediately following reports of alleged German detection of Novichok in Navalny’s body, there were predictable calls for the cancellation of the Nord Stream-2 gas project between Russia and Germany. It is no secret that pro-Washington German politicians have long been opposed to the ambitious energy trade with Russia.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has up to now been resolute in wanting Nord Stream-2 completed in spite of immense pressure from the Trump administration and the U.S. Congress to abandon it. The American agenda is transparently to replace Russian gas energy supplies with American exports.
Navalny’s apparent poison-assassination fits neatly with this strategic American agenda. Given the allegiance of German military intelligence and certain politicians to the transatlantic axis it is not difficult to conceive of how a false-flag provocation against Moscow could be orchestrated.
The problem is that in their haste to set up Navalny as a victim in order to sabotage Nord Stream-2, the authors overlooked the unfortunate anomaly of Russian doctors potentially disproving the claim of detecting Novichok in Navalny’s body. Realizing their clumsy mistake, the authors are obliged to invent another twist in the story involving a contaminated water bottle. In terms of credibility, however, their invention doesn’t hold water.
This has grave implications for the survivability of Navalny. As an opposition figure long lionized and exaggerated by the West as the nemesis of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Navalny is more valuable dead than alive as a propaganda weapon. With its false-flag narrative failing, the temptation may be to up the ante dramatically by amending the script to Navalny “succumbing” to Novichok.
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15 Saudi ‘hijackers’ were CIA agents working for US: Scholar
Press TV – April 13, 2016
Fifteen of the 9/11 “hijackers” from Saudi Arabia were CIA agents working for the United States government, which was seeking to destroy the Middle East for Israel and to double the American military budget, says Dr. Kevin Barrett, an American academic who has been studying the events of 9/11 since late 2003…. continue
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