Gavin Williamson wants YOU in the Army Reserves to fight Russia in the fake news wars!
RT | May 1, 2018
If you’re a reporter or a computer geek, then Gavin Williamson wants you to help him in the war on fake news. The UK defense secretary issued to a call to arms to tech and communications experts to fight the cyber propaganda war.
Williamson has called on those with IT or cyber skills to join the UK’s reserve forces to help end the Russian “age of disinformation,” arguing they can “change the narrative” with tech skills that are “more relevant today than anything else.”
In an interview with The House magazine, set to be published later in the week, Williamson said that the reserves need to come up with ways to get the private sector more involved in encouraging people to join the reserve forces.
The secretary argued that army recruitment should be about “looking to different people who maybe think, as a journalist: ‘What are my skills in terms of how are they relevant to the armed forces?’
“They are more relevant today than anything else, having those skills, whether it be journalists, those people with amazing cyber and IT skills, those people with the ability to really understand about getting messages across.”
Williamson said the armed forces need the next generation for a new approach to fight ever-changing modern warfare. “We have to start changing the armed forces in terms of actually attracting those people as well,” he said. “Sometimes people see the armed forces as being quite traditional in terms of its approach. But in this disinformation age, this cyber-age – people often look at cyber as something that’s separate. Actually, it’s completely relevant to every other different part of our services.”
Williamson once again compared tactics used by Russian ‘internet trolls’ to Nazi propaganda, saying in March that it “completely distorts the narrative of what people think about things… effectively the Lord Haw-Haws of the modern era”.
The defense chief has made his feelings about Russia very clear in the past. He previously told Russia to “go away and shut up” following the chemical attack against the Skripals. In January, he was accused of fear mongering after warning that Russia could kill “thousands and thousands” of Brits, “creating total chaos within the country.”
A report from the National Audit Office found the number of full-time military personnel was 8,200 people short of the required level. There is also a 26% shortfall in the number of intelligence analysts.
Did John Bolton Leak Intelligence to Sabotage a Trump-Kim Deal?
By Gareth Porter | TruthDig | April 30, 2018
The still-unscheduled Donald Trump-Kim Jong Un summit offers the opportunity for a denuclearization deal that would avoid a possible nuclear war, but that potential deal remains vulnerable to a hostile corporate media sector and political elites in the United States. At the center of this hostility is national security adviser John Bolton, who’s not just uninterested in selling a denuclearization deal to the public. He’s working actively to undermine it.
Strong circumstantial evidence indicates that he leaked intelligence to a Washington think tank sympathetic to his views in order to generate media questioning about the president’s announced plan to reach an agreement with North Korea’s leader.
Bolton made no secret of his visceral opposition to such a deal before Trump announced that Bolton would become national security adviser, arguing that Kim Jong Un would never let go of his nuclear weapons, especially since he is so close to having a real nuclear deterrent capability vis-a-vis the United States.
Even after meeting Trump on March 6 to discuss joining the administration, Bolton was not expecting the announcement of a Trump-Kim summit. Trump tweeted about progress in talks with North Korea that day, but when asked about such talks in an interview with Fox News later that same day, Bolton dismissed the whole idea. He portrayed Kim’s willingness to have discussions as aimed at diverting Washington’s attention from Pyongyang nearing its goal of having a “deliverable nuclear weapon.”
After the Trump-Kim summit was announced on March 9, Bolton made a tactical adjustment in his public stance toward talks with Kim to avoid an open conflict with Trump. He started suggesting in interviews that Trump had cleverly “foiled” Kim’s plan for long, drawn-out talks by accepting the proposal for a summit meeting. But he also urged Trump to assume a stance that would guarantee the meeting would fail.
In an interview with Fox News on the day of the summit announcement, Bolton suggested a peremptory demand by Trump to Kim: “Tell us what ports should American ships sail in, what airports American planes can land to load your nuclear weapons.” And in a second interview with Fox that day, Bolton suggested that Trump demand that Kim identify the ports and airfields to be used to “dismantle your nuclear program and put it at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where Libya’s nuclear program lives.” Bolton’s invocation of the Libyan example of giving up a nuclear weapons program was an ostentatious way of conveying his intention to keep open the option of using force to overthrow Kim’s regime.
Bolton was staking his opposition to negotiations with Kim primarily on the argument that North Korea would simply exploit such negotiations to complete its testing of a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). But former CIA Director Mike Pompeo got a concrete commitment from Kim to end all tests during their meetings in Pyongyang on April 7-8, which Kim then announced officially on April 20.
Pompeo’s report on Kim’s commitment, coming just before Bolton’s first day in the White House on April 9, immediately vitiated Bolton’s chief argument against a denuclearization agreement. But Bolton had another argument to fall back on. When a Fox News interviewer asked him on March 6 about a possible nuclear testing freeze, Bolton replied, “A freeze won’t work. The only inspections system that you could have with any prospect of finding out what they’re up to would have to be so intrusive it would threaten the stability of the regime.”
As an argument that a testing halt wouldn’t work, that comment was nonsensical: The United States has no intrusive inspections to detect a test of a long-range North Korean missile or of a nuclear weapon. But Bolton could use the need for an intrusive inspection system that North Korea would resist as an argument against a denuclearization agreement. He was well aware that in 2008, Vice President Dick Cheney forced Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to change the agreement she had reached with North Korea in October 2007 to require an intrusive verification system at a different stage of implementation—before the United States had taken North Korea off the terrorism list and ended the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act rather than after that, as had been originally agreed. North Korea refused to accept the new verification demand and then denounced the agreement in late 2008.
Within a few days of Bolton taking over as national security adviser, someone leaked intelligence to a Washington think tank on a North Korean facility allegedly intended to produce nuclear-grade graphite, a key component of nuclear reactors. The leak resulted in a post by David Albright, the executive director of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), on April 20 with satellite images of what he identified as a North Korean nuclear-grade graphite plant. Albright wrote that a “knowledgeable government official” had identified the site of the factory on the Yalu River, which divides North Korea from China.
Albright suggested that the factory “violates the spirit of the upcoming summit processes with the United States and South Korea.” And he concluded that any agreement with North Korea “must contain its verifiable commitments not to proliferate nuclear goods and abide by internationally recognized strategic export control regimes.”
But Albright presented no evidence that the building under U.S. intelligence surveillance had any bearing on negotiations on denuclearization. His report made it clear that analysts had only suspicions rather than hard evidence that it was for nuclear-grade graphite, referring to “the suspect site” and to “the suspect facility.” Albright also admitted that nuclear-grade graphite is a “dual use” material, and that an existing North Korean facility produces it for components of domestic and foreign ballistic missiles, not for nuclear plants.
Albright nevertheless implied that nuclear-grade graphite is produced and traded covertly. In fact, it is sold online by trading companies such as Alibaba like any other industrial item.
On April 21, despite the absence of any real link between the “suspect facility” and a prospective denuclearization agreement, The Washington Post published an article by intelligence reporter Joby Warrick, based on Albright’s post, that suggested such a link. Warrick referred to a “suspected graphite production facility” that could allow North Korea’s “weapons program” to “quietly advance while creating an additional source of badly needed export revenue.”
Adopting Bolton’s key argument against a denuclearization agreement, Warrick wrote, “It is unclear how the United States and its allies would reliably verify a suspension of key facets of North Korea’s nuclear program or confirm that it has stopped selling weapons components to partners overseas.” North Korea has “a long history of concealing illicit weapons activity from foreign eyes,” Warrick argued, adding that, unlike Iran, it “does not allow inspectors to visit its nuclear facilities.”
But Warrick failed to inform readers that North Korea had allowed 24-hour, 7-day-a-week inspections of their nuclear facilities from the time the agreed framework was adopted in 1994 until December 2002, after Bolton had successfully engineered the George W. Bush administration’s open renunciation of that Clinton administration agreement. And in the negotiations in 2007-08, Pyongyang only had objected to the U.S. demand for intrusive inspection—including military sites—before the United States had ended its suite of hostile policies toward North Korea.
The graphite factory episode would not be the first time Bolton had used alleged intelligence to try to block a negotiated agreement. In early 2004, Bolton, as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, was determined to prevent the British, French and German governments from reaching an accord with Iran that would frustrate Cheney’s plan for an eventual U.S. military option against Iran. Bolton gave satellite images of Iran’s Parchin military complex to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) claiming that they were appropriate for certain kinds of nuclear weapons testing, as Seymour Hersh later reported. Bolton demanded that the IAEA inspect the sites, evidently hoping that Iran would refuse such an intrusive inspection and allow the Bush administration to accuse Iran of hiding covert weapons activities.
But the IAEA failed to refer to the satellite images of Parchin in two 2004 reports on Iran. Then the State Department provided them to ABC News, which reported that a State Department official “confirmed the United States suspects nuclear activity at some of [Parchin’s] facilities.” But the ABC report also quoted a former senior Department of Defense official who specialized in nuclear weapons as saying the images did not constitute evidence of any nuclear weapons-related activities. Iran let the IAEA inspect 10 Parchin sites in two separate visits in 2005. Taking environment samples in each case, the inspectors found no evidence of nuclear-related activity.
Bolton’s hopes of keeping the option of U.S. war on Iran flopped in 2004, but he still believes in a first strike against North Korea, as he urged in an op-ed in late February. And he can be expected to continue to use his position in the White House to try to keep that option open as he did with Iran in 2004, in part by covert leaks of information to allies outside the government.
The UK Government’s Skripal Conspiracy Theory – or The Art of Holding a Mass of Contradictory Thoughts in Your Head
By Rob Slane – TheBlogMire – April 30, 2018
The Official Narrative on the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal is a collection of illogical claims and assertions that cannot be made to fit together, that make no rational sense, and which would require us to hold a mass of contradictory thoughts in our head if we were to accept it. It is in short a conspiracy theory, and a particularly bad one at that.
As I have pointed out before, I am not attempting to counter this conspiracy theory with one of my own. I make no claims to know what happened in the Skripal incident. I am merely stating that the story that the UK Government and media have so far asked the public to believe cannot be true, since it is full of discrepancies and claims that are impossible to reconcile with the known facts.
They are, of course, welcome at any time to show how those contradictions and improbable assertions can be reconciled, but until such time as they advance a compelling and coherent explanation, rational and objective observers shall just have to assume that these contradictions exist for a reason – namely that the official narrative of what happened in the Skripal case is not in fact what really happened in the Skripal case.
So what exactly are those contradictory elements and improbable assertions in the Official Narrative, which place it firmly in the territory of a Very Bad Conspiracy Theory? There are many, but below are 10 of the most obvious:
1. A lethal nerve agent followed by a drink and a meal
The Official Narrative requires you to believe not only that Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned by the military grade nerve agent A-234, a substance which is said to be 5-8 ten times the toxicity of VX nerve agent (which itself has a median lethal dose of 10mg), and the effects of which are said to take place within 30 seconds to two minutes.
… But also that after coming into contact with this substance, they then spent the next four hours wining and dining in the City of Salisbury.
2. A deadly nerve agent without antidote, but where everyone is fine
The Official Narrative requires you not only to believe that Mr and Miss Skripal were poisoned by a deadly nerve agent with no known antidote (according to Gary Aitkenhead, Chief Executive of Porton Down), and for which treatment is “practically impossible”, according to The Handbook of Toxicology of Chemical Warfare Agents.
… But also that just a few weeks later, both were fine and one of them at least was fit to be discharged from hospital.
3. Symptoms that don’t match those produced by the substance allegedly used
The Official Narrative requires you to believe that the Skripals were poisoned by a substance which produces the following symptoms:
“Acetylcholine concentrations then increase at neuromuscular junctions to cause involuntary contraction of all skeletal muscles. This then leads to respiratory and cardiac arrest (as the victim’s heart and diaphragm muscles no longer function normally) and finally death from heart failure or suffocation as copious fluid secretions fill the victim’s lungs.”
… Yet according to witnesses at the bench in The Maltings, Mr Skripal was making “strange hand movements”, “looking up to the sky” and “looking out of it” – symptoms which strongly suggest poisoning by a hallucinogenic, such as BZ or Fentanyl, and not A-234, which tends to produce death, rather than hallucinations.
4. That Salisbury District Hospital mistook the symptoms of military grade nerve agent for opioid poisoning
The Official Narrative requires you to believe that the Skripals were the victims of poisoning by a lethal nerve agent, which produces the symptoms mentioned above, including “involuntary contraction of all skeletal muscles”, “respiratory and cardiac arrest” and “finally death from heart failure or suffocation.”
… Yet it also requires you to believe that Salisbury District Hospital completely mistook the symptoms of nerve agent poisoning for opioid poisoning — even though the symptoms are very different — since on the following day a press release was issued stating that they were treating the pair for exposure to Fentanyl:
(This, by the way, is extremely interesting. The screen shot above is the original report on the website of Clinical Services Journal, and it can now be found on the website, web.archive.org. The original piece, however, has since been updated on the Clinical Services Journal, not with a correction, but with the reference to Fentanyl being removed altogether (compare here with here h/t Dilyana Gaytandzhiev)
5. A lethal nerve agent that can be dealt with by water and baby wipes
The Official Narrative requires you not only to believe that the substance which poisoned the Skripals is so deadly that Mr Skripal’s house may need to be demolished and a multi-million pound clean-up of Salisbury with chaps in HazMats a necessity.
…But that the same substance can be treated with warm water, soap and baby wipes, as evidenced by the advice given by Public Health England (PHE) a week after the incident, to anyone who may have come into contact with it:
“Wash the clothing that you were wearing in an ordinary washing machine using your regular detergent at the temperature recommended for the clothing. Wipe personal items such as phones, handbags and other electronic items with cleansing or baby wipes and dispose of the wipes in the bin (ordinary domestic waste disposal)… Other items such as jewellery and spectacles which cannot go in the washing machine or be cleaned with cleansing or baby wipes, should be hand washed with warm water and detergent and then rinsed with clean cold water. Please thoroughly wash your hands with soap and water after cleaning any items.”
6. The nerve agent went undetected on a door handle for weeks
The Official Narrative requires you not only to believe that the assassins poured “military grade nerve agent”, in liquid form, on the handle of Mr Skripal’s front door, and that the British Government had possession of an FSB “assassin’s handbook” detailing this procedure.
… But that despite apparently having this handbook, the door handle theory was only mentioned more than three weeks after the incident, during which time many people (such as the unsuspecting policewoman at the top of this piece), came within a few feet of a door apparently smeared with lethal nerve agent, with no protective clothing, and suffered no ill effects.
7. The highly volatile nerve agent that was still highly pure weeks later
The Official Narrative requires you not only to believe that the substance examined in blood and environmental samples by the OPCW, weeks after the incident was:
“…of high purity. The latter is concluded from the almost complete absence of impurities.”
… But also that the substance used is known to be both unstable and vulnerable to water – and Salisbury definitely had plenteous rain and even snow between the incident and the coming of the OPCW!
8. That the substance used is proof of Russian state culpability
The Official Narrative requires you to believe that because the substance allegedly used was first developed in Russia (actually Soviet Union), there are only two explanations for the poisoning:
- It was an act of the Russian state
- That the Russian state lost control of its stocks
… Yet it requires you to believe this in the full knowledge that not only have other countries produced it (the United States has been patenting “Novichok” products for years; Iran produced it in 2016; and the United Kingdom possesses samples of it), but according to the chairman of the OPCW, Ahmet Uzumcu, A-234 could be produced:
“…in any country where there would be some chemical expertise.”
9. That the movements of Detective Sergeant Bailey on 4th March cannot be officially confirmed
The Official Narrative requires you to believe not only that Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, who is a member of Wiltshire Criminal Intelligence Department (CID), was poisoned with the same substance as the Skripals.
…But that his movements cannot be established, since it has still not been officially confirmed whether he was at the bench in The Maltings or at Mr Skripal’s house (and in point of fact, either scenario is remarkably odd, since D.S. Bailey is a member of CID, and there was no suggestion until at least 24 hours after the incident that a crime may have been committed).
10. The cleansing of Salisbury hotspots, but not all Salisbury hotspots
The Official Narrative requires you to believe not only that there are parts of Salisbury that may be contaminated with a lethal substance, and that this will require a clean up operation involving thousands of man hours, costing millions, and taking months to complete.
…But that some of these areas were no danger to the public for a month-and-a-half, when they were cordoned off with nothing more than police tape. In addition, some of the areas that the Skripals were known to have walked down after apparently coming into contact with the substance, such as the Market Walk, have been free to the public to walk through since the start of the incident and remain completely open (I know this personally, because as a Salisbury resident, I have walked through the Market Walk in the last few days).
* * *
Put all these things together — and this is not to even mention the current condition and whereabouts of the Skripals — and what you have is a theory in which claims are flatly contradicted by basic facts, many so-called facts are simply not facts at all, and assertions are made without any recourse to the reality on the ground. It is abundantly clear that the Official Narrative not only did not happen; it cannot have happened. As things stand it is “highly likely” that what we have been told is a conspiracy theory of “high purity”, “of a type developed by Whitehall.”
Sunday Times ‘explosive’ report on Russian bot support for Corbyn is really a complete dud
RT | April 29, 2018
Just when you thought we’d hit peak ‘Russian meddling’ claims, there’s a whole new fear-mongering report in town. The Sunday Times has released an ‘investigation’ linking a pesky Russian bot army with Labour’s June election gains.
Heaven forbid British voters may have been swayed by a lack of leadership by the Tories…
The Sunday Times exclusive, but apparently not in-depth, joint investigation with Swansea University claims that 6,500 ‘Russian’ Twitter accounts sent messages of support for the British Labour Party in the seven weeks before last year’s snap general election, sharing “mass-produced” and “orchestrated” political messages.
Given that politicians and multi-billion dollar corporations spend exorbitant amounts of money trying to influence public opinion, it’s extremely hard to imagine how recently-created, thinly-veiled bot accounts could possibly garner enough of a following to somehow influence millions of voters across the UK within mere weeks. That logic didn’t stop the Times, though.
Among the handpicked accounts sampled in the study, nine out of 10 messages were in support of the Labour party while 9 out of 10 messages mentioning the Conservative party were critical. In addition, some 80 percent of the “automated accounts” were created in the weeks prior to the June, 2017 general election. Notably, the list of Twitter accounts ‘studied’ by the paper and university have not been released, nor have they outlined just how many followers (which is generally a good barometer of the potential reach of a tweet) the accounts had.
Here we go again…
The ‘revelations’ fall neatly in line with the ongoing scapegoat narrative across the mainstream media: Russia is supposedly influencing everything from the 2016 US presidential election to the Brexit vote to potentially meddling in the German elections and the Catalonian independence referendum. While time and time again the narrative fails due to blatant lack of evidence, it is seemingly irresistible to Western MSM and politicians alike.
Just this week, the US House Intelligence Committee “found no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded, coordinated, or conspired with the Russian government.” Yet the narrative persists.
The timing of publication for the Sunday Times report is also rather conspicuous given Labour’s reported lead over the Conservatives heading into next week’s local elections, as noted online.
How they ‘cracked the case’
According to the Sunday Times, academics at Swansea University helpfully identified the accounts and tweets for the investigation. One of the academics has been fielding questions online regarding the study’s curious methodology.
Interestingly, while Talavera lists his location as ‘South West, England,’ he does also have European, British, and Ukrainian flag emojis on his public Twitter profile. Using his own methodology, though – that language or national identity immediately equate to political bias – one could attribute his account to any number of foreign actors who might seek to influence elections in Britain.
He also doesn’t acknowledge that Twitter users can set their own locations, nor does he address a claim in the Times that “many of our Russian bot accounts gave American states as their location.”
The economics lecturer is one of the co-founders of Vox Ukraine, “an independent analytical platform founded in 2014, after the Revolution of Dignity, by a team of highly experienced economists and lawyers based in Ukraine and abroad.”
Meanwhile, Swansea University boasts a Hillary Clinton PhD scholarship – but the Times doesn’t note any potential conflict of interest there or any potential for influence peddling via ‘academic research.’
Those beastly bots
Hundreds of the bot accounts were reportedly created simultaneously and “displayed clear identifying factors.” One common distinguishing feature among the accounts was that they used “15-character alphanumeric usernames” (as is the case with almost all Twitter users) and “with a false western woman’s name attached.” What differentiates these accounts, apparently, is that they listed their first language as Russian.
The Times also claimed that hundreds of the accounts were set up simultaneously despite Twitter only displaying the month and year in which the account was created, not the specific day. Perhaps all of the accounts synchronized their first tweets (or retweets, as seems to be the case in a lot of the examples cited by The Times ), though the analysis does not explicitly state this. In addition, Twitter’s Application Programming Interface (API) is closed to the public, meaning it would be incredibly difficult, or nigh on impossible, for researchers to gain access to the metadata for thousands of accounts, Russian bot or otherwise.
Furthermore, the bot accounts were reportedly later suspended by Twitter’s moderators or voluntarily shut themselves down, presumably after some sort of bot existential crisis. We say ‘reportedly,’ as apparently the researchers didn’t go back and check.
What about causation vs correlation?
The accounts apparently retweeted pro-Labour and anti-Tory messages on May 18, when Theresa May announced the Conservative manifesto. In particular, according to the Times, the bots retweeted Corbyn campaign publicity, particularly around rallies which drew “unusually large crowds.” Crucially, The Times’ analysis doesn’t quite delve into how there’s causation (as it implies) rather than correlation between retweets and participant numbers growing at rallies.
Swansea researchers claimed that 16,000 “Russian bots” had been tweeting about British politics since last April. However, they decided to narrow their focus to a sample of just 6,500 accounts and 20,000 individual tweets posted by that selection in the four weeks before the UK General election, based on an apparently ad hoc list of criteria.
The Times also concludes that Labour “won the social media war” because of greater shares online despite the fact that the Conservatives outspent Labour on Facebook advertisements, not to mention that this study was focused solely on Twitter.
The West Closes its Ears to Douma Testimony
By Jonathan Cook | Dissident Voice | April 28, 2018
The response from the US, UK and France to a briefing on Thursday at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in the Hague was perverse, to say the least. Russia had brought 17 witnesses from Douma who stated that there had been no chemical weapons attack there earlier this month – the pretext for an illegal air strike on Syria by the three western states.
The witnesses, a mix of victims and the doctors who treated them, told accounts that confirmed a report provided last week from Douma by British reporter Robert Fisk – a report, it should be noted, that has been almost entirely blanked by the western media. According to the testimony provided at the OPCW, the victims shown in a video from the site of the alleged attack were actually suffering from the effects of inhaling dust after a bombing raid, not gas.
The first strange thing to note is that the US, UK and France boycotted the meeting, denouncing Russia for producing the witnesses and calling the event an “obscene masquerade” and “theatre”. It suggests that this trio, behaving like the proverbial three monkeys, think the testimony will disappear if they simply ignore it. They have no interest in hearing from witnesses unless they confirm the western narrative used to justify the air strikes on Syria.
Testimony from witnesses is surely a crucial part of determining what actually happened. The US, UK and France are surely obligated to listen to the witnesses first, and then seek to discredit the testimony afterwards if they think it implausible or coerced. The evidence cannot be tested and rebutted if it is not even considered.
The second is that the media are echoing this misplaced scorn for evidence. They too seem to have prejudged whether the witnesses are credible before listening to what they have to say (similar to their treatment of Fisk). Tellingly, the Guardian described these witnesses as “supposed witnesses”, not a formulation that suggests any degree of impartiality in its coverage.
Notice that when the Guardian refers to witnesses who support the UK-UK-French line, often those living under the rule of violent jihadist groups, the paper does not designate them “supposed witnesses” or assume their testimony is coerced. Why for the Guardian are some witnesses only professing to be witnesses, while others really are witnesses. The answer appears to depend on whether the testimony accords with the official western narrative. There is a word for that, and it is not “journalism”.
The third and biggest problem, however, is that neither the trio of western states nor the western media are actually contesting the claim that these “supposed witnesses” were present in Douma, and that some of them were shown in the video. Rather, the line taken by the Guardian and others is that: “The veracity [of] the statements by the Russian-selected witnesses at The Hague will be challenged, since their ability to speak truthfully is limited.”
So the question is not whether they were there, but whether they are being coerced into telling a story that undermines the official western narrative, as well as the dubious rationale for attacking Syria.
But that leaves us with another difficulty. No one, for example, appears to be doubting that Hassan Diab, a boy who testified at the hearing, is also the boy shown in the video who was supposedly gassed with a nerve agent three weeks ago. How then do we explain that he is now looking a picture of health? It is not as though the US, UK and French governments and the western media have had no time to investigate his case. He and his father have been saying for at least a week on Russian TV that there was no chemical attack.
Instead, we are getting yet more revisions to a story that was originally presented as so cut-and-dried that it justified an act of military aggression by the US, UK and France against Syria, without authorisation from the UN Security Council – in short, a war crime of the highest order.
It is worth noting the BBC’s brief account. It has suggested that Diab was there, and that he is the boy shown in the video, but that he was not a victim of a gas attack. It implies that there were two kinds of victims shown in the video taken in Douma: those who were victims of a chemical attack, and those next to them who were victims of dust inhalation.
That requires a great deal of back-peddling on the original narrative.
It is conceivable, I suppose, that there was a chemical attack on that neighbourhood of Douma, in which people like Diab assumed they had been gassed when, in fact, that they had not been, and that others close by were actually gassed. It is also conceivable that the effects of dust inhalation and gassing were so similar that the White Helmets staff mistakenly filmed the “wrong victims”, highlighting those like Diab who had not been gassed. And it is also conceivable, I guess, that Diab and his family now feel the need to lie under Russian pressure about there not being a gas attack, even though their account would, according to this revised narrative, actually accord with their experience of what happened.
But even if each of these scenarios is conceivable on its own, how plausible are they when taken together. Those of us who have preferred to avoid a rush to judgment until there was actual evidence of a chemical weapons attack have been invariably dismissed as “conspiracy theorists”. But who is really proposing the more fanciful conspiracy here: those wanting evidence, or those creating an elaborate series of revisions to maintain the credibility of their original story?
If there is one thing certain in all of this, it is that the video produced as cast-iron evidence of a chemical weapons attack has turned out to be nothing of the sort.
Western media silent as Rodchenkov’s Russian doping claims fail to stand up in court
RT | April 28, 2018
Russian officials plan to sue Grigory Rodchenkov, whose testimony played a key part in the country’s Olympic bans, after a sports court rejected his claims. But most believe it’s too late to reverse the impact of the doping saga.
The scandal over Olympic doping has been running since 2014, and most of the allegations have been known for years. What’s changed?
In a landmark ruling in February, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the highest legal authority in such cases, reversed the life bans of 28 Russian sportsmen and gave them back their medals, many of them from the Sochi Olympics in 2014.
But it was only this week that a 160-page summary of the session exposed exactly how the allegations that led to the exclusion of entire Russian teams in various sports from Rio 2016 and PyeongChang 2018 failed to stand up to legal scrutiny.
Who failed to convince?
Between 2005 and 2015, Grigory Rodchenkov headed Moscow’s anti-doping testing lab before resigning in the wake of the scandal and eloping to the US, where his words laid the foundation for the portrayal of “state-sponsored” doping in Russia involving athletes, coaches, and officials at all levels. He remains in an American witness protection program and testified via Skype “behind a screen, which concealed the entirety of his upper body save for his forearms and hands” according to CAS.
He maintained that there was a “Sochi plan” designed to pump Russian athletes with performance-enhancing drugs and then swap any contaminated samples for pre-stored urine during the 2014 Games. He also described that he was the inventor of the Duchess Cocktail, a powerful mix of PEDs allegedly distributed to a list of Russian athletes. Many were later excluded from competing on the basis of the Duchess list.
However, when cross-examined, Rodchenkov admitted that he “never: (a) distributed the Duchess Cocktail; (b) seen an athlete take the Duchess Cocktail; (c) witnessed instructions being given to athletes and coaches to use the Duchess Cocktail; (d) seen an athlete give a clean urine sample; or (e) seen an athlete tamper with a doping sample.” He also admitted that no test of the effectiveness of the Duchess cocktail was ever conducted, and when asked about its exact make-up, which has been a matter of some contention, he “stated that he needed five minutes to explain, and therefore refrained from doing so.”
He also repeated claims that a team of officials, nicknamed “Magicians,” had developed a technique for opening tamper-proof sample bottles in order to manipulate them and clear Russian athletes, but added that he personally “never observed first hand any bottles being opened or de-capped” and did not know the “precise method” used by them.
How did the panel respond to Rodchenkov?
The exiled official turned out to be a star witness for the Russian appellants in the case. In its conclusion, it said that his assertion of the guilt of Alexander Legkov, the Sochi gold-winning skier who led the appeal, constituted a “bare assertion which is uncorroborated by any contemporaneous documentary evidence.” On the use of Duchess by a specific athlete, which a specific official reportedly told Rodchenkov about, the panel ruled that it is “hearsay” of “very limited” value. As to his claims of a Sochi plan, ahead of which clean urine samples were delivered to him, CAS stated that the witness’s words were “not corroborated by any further evidence.”
Which other testimony casts doubt on the accusations against Russian athletes?
Richard McLaren, the former head of WADA and author of the eponymous report, whose list of names were used to ban hundreds of competitors, freely admitted that their inclusion did not “mean that they committed an anti-doping rule violation,” and that he was “merely asked to identify those who may have benefited from the systems.” The Canadian professor added that his report was, in any case, “just the starting point for further work” and was severely restricted by budgetary and time constraints.
In view of questions over Rodchenkov, McLaren was asked if his report was, in essence, based on his single testimony. The expert objected, saying that he sought to “corroborate everything” and explained that the Russian scientist’s evidence had been confirmed by “four individuals who provided information on condition that their identities would remain confidential.”
What effect has the publication of the court documents had in Russia?
An outburst of righteous fury.
“Rodchenkov has done his dark deed. We have suffered colossal damage,” said renowned skater and coach Irina Rodnina, one of those namechecked in the fugitive’s accusations. “Since these claims have surfaced we have tried to play by the rules against those without rules.”
“Rodchenkov lied about doping in our country, which was to be proved. I recommend that a commission is assembled that would gather all false publications about Russian athletes in the Western media, and sue them for defamation,” tweeted Igor Lebedev, the deputy chairman of the Russian Duma.
“It’s clear Rodchenkov is mixing up his stories, and his new testimony is evidence that the previous ones were fabrications,” said Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s press secretary.
What has been the reaction in the West?
A polite silence. Aside from specialist websites writing about Olympic sport, no major Western outlet has covered the story.
This is particularly telling in view of the fact that the entire doping scandal was not started by investigators, but German documentary makers from ARD, who managed to create the biggest Olympics upheaval since the fall of the Soviet Union with the help of little more than interviews with two other runaway Russian insiders, the Stepanovs.
Since then, there has been a consistent barrage of accusations, all of them reported without question within the wider context of Moscow’s new image of an international rogue state, from Crimea to the US voting booths to the running track.
Just a fortnight ago, Rodchenkov gave an interview to a Norwegian TV station wearing a ski mask and a balaclava, and his words were spread verbatim by dozens of outlets from the New York Times to Fox News.
Only last month, hundreds of millions around the world tuned in to watch Icarus, a film in which he was portrayed as a heroic whistleblower, which won an Oscar for Best Documentary.
The officials have been similarly reticent.
When the original ruling was published, IOC chief Thomas Bach stepped in to say that it was “extremely disappointing and surprising” and demanded that CAS reform itself.
Meanwhile, the American anti-doping agency USADA, which earlier said that the February ruling had “sabotaged the integrity of the Games” despite not being at the CAS hearing and added that “the whole mess stinks” and that “the nightmare for clean athletes continues,” has not been quick to retract its statements or turn away from Rodchenkov.
In any case, Russia’s anti-doping agency remains under suspension, without accreditation to enter its own testing centers, and although the country will be allowed to compete under its own flag at Tokyo 2020, several of its teams will have limited allocations.
What about the athletes whose names have been cleared?
Legkov told Russian television how he felt when he was forced to miss the Olympics this year despite being cleared, because the IOC chose not to invite any athletes whose names had been linked to doping scandals, regardless of guilt.
“I was preparing for Pyeongchang like a madman, I give it my all. I had better results in tests than even those ahead of Sochi. In a moment all that was ruined,” said the skier.
“No one was listening to us. We insisted on our innocence right from the start. But we lost those years of our careers. We trained our whole lives to be able to do this,” Maxim Vylegzhanin, who won three silver medals at Sochi and had them restored by the same decision this year, told RT.
What next?
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that Russia “defend[s] clean athletes,” while former sports minister and hockey legend Viacheslav Fetisov said that “now we have a chance of winning our cases in court,” as long as “there is a firm position, and facts to back it up.” The Russian Luge Federation and several individuals say that they will launch lawsuits, which may mention Rodchenkov by name.
“It’s evident that McLaren just took Rodchenkov’s words at face value. The CAS decision confirms that now. The guilt of the athletes, if it was present, should have been determined with evidence. This did not happen. We await more legal proceedings,” said Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov.
But several top officials say it is too little, too late, not just for those sportspeople who missed the last Olympics, but for Russian sports as a whole.
“This will change nothing,” said Nikolay Durmanov, the ex-chief of the Russian anti-doping agency. “Yes we can enjoy some moral satisfaction, but in the eyes of the world Russian sport has been painted a rich black color, and there is nothing we can do to wash that reputational stain off this generation. This was an information war waged against us.”
Former Russian regional leader wins slander lawsuit over Reuters report of ISIS ties
FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov at a news conference © Anton Denisov / Sputnik
RT | April 27, 2018
Former president of the Russian internal republic of Kalmykia and the current head of FIDE, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, says he has proved in court that a Reuters report about alleged deals with ISIS was fake and aimed to slander him.
“I have won my court case against Reuters, they have already apologized and now I am expecting them to pay me £50,000 ($69,000) in damages,” RIA Novosti quoted him as saying. “I have already received official apologies from the Washington Times newspaper and there is another newspaper that we have sued for $500,000. Step by step, I am going to win,” he added.
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is a Russian politician, businessman and chess grandmaster, who headed the Russian region of Kalmykia between 1993 and 2010, and is currently the president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE).
Ilyumzhinov filed a lawsuit against Reuters in March 2016, claiming that the agency’s report of his alleged oil deals with the Islamic State terrorist group (IS, formerly ISIS) was false, and that it damaged his reputation and honor. He also sued two chess players, who spread similar information on social networks, but the outcome of this case is not yet known.
In November 2015, the United States put Ilyumzhinov on the sanctions list over his alleged material aid and other actions in the interests of the Syrian government, central bank and President Bashar Assad.
In early 2017, Ilyumzhinov accused the US of staging a plot to oust him from the post of FIDE president. “I did not sign anything and I am not stepping down. I believe the Americans are behind this escapade and it looks like a set-up,” he told reporters in comments on reports of his alleged resignation.
Also in early 2017, Ilyumzhinov told reporters that he would be running for FIDE president again in 2018, despite the problems caused by the US sanctions.
Syrian children should be seen, not heard
Apparently, evidence is to be claimed, and not shown
By Frank Sellers | The Duran | April 27, 2018
As the Russian delegation to the OPCW conducts a press briefing at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ headquarters, the Western media is blasting the evidences that it is presenting, which includes the testimony of some of the very alleged victims of the suspected chemical attack that took place in Douma on April 7th, allegedly by Syrian government forces under the direction of the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad.
One of those witnesses who has come forward at the briefing is the boy, Hassan Diab, who was featured prominently in the video that the White Helmets NGO released in a twitter post, and which was then used by Western governments and media as evidence of the supposed chemical attack which was utilized as a pretext to conduct an illegal joint military ‘precision’ strike on the Syrian capital of Damascus.
In the video produced by the White Helmets, the ‘evidence’ of the chemical attack, Hassan Diab is shown allegedly suffering from the symptoms of a chlorine gas attack, and being hosed with water while White Helmets ‘volunteers’ shout ‘chemical attack’, rushing about with children in their arms.
The briefing also hosts medical personnel who witnessed the incident and who also treated people at the site, who are adamant that no one who was treated at the site shown in the White Helmets video was experiencing symptoms of such an attack.
This video footage, which is now being described as showing a scene that is inconsistent with the claims made by Western governments and media, shows no real evidence for a chlorine gas attack, other than the shouts made by White Helmets participants.
To date, this video footage, posted to Twitter, is the only evidence that has been released to the world of a supposed chemical attack in Douma on the 7th of April. Based on the testimony of these witnesses, over a dozen of whose testimonies are presented at the briefing, the video therefore cannot be considered legitimate evidence of a chemical attack, let alone a justification of Western military intervention in Syria.
Russia and Syria are declaring that the video is that of a staged event, and therefore is not genuine, while the testimonies of witnesses at this press briefing are consistent with this finding, as no real victims or casualties of chemical weapons have so far turned up as a result of the alleged chemical attack. Much less evidence that a chemical weapons attack was launched by Syrian government forces, or even at the behest of the Syrian President.
The West is calling the press briefing a ‘mounting propaganda campaign’, with the British Ambassador to the OPCW, Peter Wilson, calling it ‘a stunt’ to ‘misuse’ the OPCW as a ‘theatre’ to ‘undermine the OPCW’s work’.
Similarly, the French Ambassador to the OPCW, Phillippe Lalliot, is denouncing it as an ‘obscene masquerade’, and is indirectly lodging accusations that the contents of the briefing are bogus.
Additionally, the AFP, in this article, is even going so far as to hint that the boy testifying before the press briefing may not actually be Hassan Diab.
In a mounting propaganda campaign, Hassan, who is seen in the footage being hosed down and shivering, told a press conference in a hotel in The Hague that he didn’t know why people began pouring water on him in the hospital.
He was among a dozen people presented as victims or doctors or hospital workers, who all told similar stories — that someone had shouted out “chemical weapons” as hospital staff were treating injured people from a missile bombardment and panic spread.
“Unknown people started creating chaos, and pouring water on people. We were specialists and we could see there were no symptoms of the use of chemical weapons,” said physician Khalil, who said he was on duty in the emergency care unit.
He said “patients with choking symptoms” had begun coming to the hospital about 7:00pm, but it “was the result of people breathing in dust and smoke” from the bombardment.
Everyone was treated and sent home, Khalil added, denying reports from the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) and the White Helmets who jointly said dozens of people had died.
Britain boycotted the group’s earlier briefing at the OPCW, saying it was a stunt, in a move followed by France, the United States and EU countries.
“The OPCW is not a theatre. Russia’s decision to misuse it is yet another Russian attempt to undermine the OPCW’s work,” said British ambassador to the OPCW Peter Wilson in a statement.
French ambassador Philippe Lalliot also denounced the briefing as an “obscene masquerade”.
“This masquerade only betrays the huge nervousness of those who organised it and who have the most to fear from the OPCW investigation,” Lalliot said.
“No-one is fooled. The truth will come out.”
– ‘We saw no poison’ –
Hassan, who was said to be 11 years old, told dozens of journalists: “We were in the basement. We heard cries on the street that we should go to the hospital. We got scared.”
“We went to the hospital through the tunnel. They started pouring water on me in the hospital I don’t know why.”
His father, Omar Diab, said: “The children were taken without explanation. After that we learnt it was fake. We never saw any poison or chemical agents. Neither I nor my family.”
The OPCW has also criticised the meeting in its headquarters, saying it had recommended to Russia that it should wait until its inspectors had completed their work.
AFP then goes on to label the White Helmets organization ‘a humanitarian organization’, who are being unfairly targeted by the Syrian government for the label of ‘terrorists’.
The White Helmets, a humanitarian organisation made up of some 3,000 volunteers, has regularly been the target of disinformation campaigns by the Syrian regime which has labelled them “terrorists”.
But the White Helmets have a history of cooperating with terrorist organizations in Syria, and of conducting horrific atrocities, as documented here:
Meanwhile, Western governments insisted that they were in possession of ‘proof’ of the chemical weapons attack and that the Syrian government perpetrated it. The US has alleged that they are in possession of blood and urine samples from the site of the alleged attack which provided conclusive proof that chlorine and some unidentified nerve agent were used in the attack.
France’s President, Emmanuel Macron, is also insisting that his government is in possession of “proof”, which is declared without providing any details relative to what the proof is or how it was acquired, that not only were chemical weapons employed in this attack, but that Bashar al-Assad’s regime was indeed behind it all. Additionally, the UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, declared that nearly 600 people were killed in the attack, all the while pointing to the video produced by the White Helmets on Twitter.
These alleged ‘proofs’ which were never released for examination by any independent authority, were never publicly presented, but were nevertheless utilized as the catalyst to launch a joint offensive against the Syrian capital of Damascus.
The video in question, however, does not show 575 people suffering from or dying from exposure to a chemical and ‘mystery’ nerve agent. Neither, however, have such casualties appeared in the town of Douma in or around the site as a result of exposure to the banned chemical agents. Hence, evidence that a chemical weapon was utilized in Douma is severely lacking.
It begs the question, from whence the blood and urine tests that the US and WHO are claiming as their ‘evidence’? How was this ‘evidence’ obtained? Where are these victims of chlorine gas and the ‘nerve agent’? Why are the testimonies of witnesses from the site of the alleged attack not describing events consistent with a legitimate chemical attack? Further, why is the West being so rash to judgment against the presentation of the testimonies of these witnesses? Why are France and the US boycotting the briefing? If the chemical research lab in Damascus that was struck by US led coalition air strikes was indeed manufacturing or storing chemical weapons, why has the OPCW declared that their investigation has found no such evidence?
Apparently, evidence is to be claimed, and not shown. Victims are to be seen, and not heard. Claims are to be made, and not verified. Guilt is to be assumed, and not proven. Military strikes are to be conducted, but not justified. Military campaigns are to be carried out, but not for cause. The forces of the West are righteous, but not for reason.
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From the Archives
The Geopolitics behind the War in Yemen (I)
By Mahdi Darius NAZEMROAYA | Strategic Culture Foundation | 30.03.2015
The United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia became very uneasy when the Yemenese or Yemenite movement of the Houthi or Ansarallah (meaning the supporters of God in Arabic) gained control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa/Sana, in September 2014. The US-supported Yemenite President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi was humiliatingly forced to share power with the Houthis and the coalition of northern Yemenese tribes that had helped them enter Sana. Al-Hadi declared that negotiations for a Yemeni national unity government would take place and his allies the US and Saudi Arabia tried to use a new national dialogue and mediated talks to co-opt and pacify the Houthis.
The truth has been turned on its head about the war in Yemen. The war and ousting of President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi in Yemen are not the results of «Houthi coup» in Yemen. It is the opposite. Al-Hadi was ousted, because with Saudi and US support he tried to backtrack on the power sharing agreements he had made and return Yemen to authoritarian rule. The ousting of President Al-Hadi by the Houthis and their political allies was an unexpected reaction to the takeover Al-Hadi was planning with Washington and the House of Saudi. … continue
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