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Lady Justice Sits Down With a Stiff Drink to Consider Her Next Career Move

By Rob Slane | The Blog Mire | October 10, 2018

I am currently in the U.S., and so watching from afar as the biggest criminal investigation Britain has ever seen is sub-contracted out to the Atlantic Council/Soros-sponsored website, Bellingcat. Pinch yourself once. Pinch yourself twice. Yes, it really is happening.

It is truly remarkable that having seen millions of pounds spent on an investigation which has failed to give consistent and logical answers to some of the biggest questions in the case, and which has been remarkably economical with the actualité on things like timelines, a website with dubious connections to various neo-conservative organisations has now ridden to the rescue to fill in the gaps which The Met has apparently missed (as an aside neo-conservative is of course a misnomer, since they don’t actually conserve anything. They are in reality neo-Trotskyists, since they are globalists and like destroying stuff). Any taxpayers out there feel like a refund?

The media seems to be having a field day quoting Bellingcat as if it were now the official mouthpiece of The Metropolitan Police and the Government. Of course it may well be the official mouthpiece, only we can’t quite tell as The Met and HMG sneakily hide behind the claims instead of either confirming or denying them:

“A spokesman for the Home Office said it would not comment as it was a police investigation.”

“The Metropolitan Police said they would not comment on the ‘speculation’.”

“And Lady Justice said she would not comment on the case anymore, because she’s had enough and needs to sit down in a corner of a darkened room with a stiff drink, before considering what her next career move might be.”

I have no intention of being sucked into the black hole of analysing the Bellingcat claims. I have no idea of the validity of their claims. They may well be correct. They may well not. However, as I have pointed out many times before, the case against the two suspects is not that they were undercover intelligence officers; rather, it is that they carried out an assassination attempt at the front door of 47 Christie Miller Road using something called “Novichok”. And I am only really interested in whether that case does, or does not stack up.

Reading through the charges made against the two men again, which were given in the statement put out by The Metropolitan Police on 5th September, it strikes me as fairly obvious that investigators do not actually have the evidence of the men’s culpability that they claimed to have when they said:

“We now have sufficient evidence to bring charges in relation to the attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury.”

Why do I say this? Because although Mr Basu stated that he would go through their movements “in detail”, in actual fact he did nothing of the sort. Take a look at what he said about their movements on Saturday 3rd March:

“On Saturday, 3 March, they left the hotel and took the underground to Waterloo station, arriving at approximately 11.45am, where they caught a train to Salisbury, arriving at approximately 2.25pm. They are believed to have taken a similar route when they returned to London on the afternoon of Saturday, 3 March. Leaving Salisbury at approximately 4.10pm and arriving in Bow at approximately 8.05 pm.”

Question: How much detail did he actually give about their movements in Salisbury that day? The answer is none at all. Read it again. There’s nothing. Yes, there’s a lot of fluff about their movements in London, but other than the fact that they arrived in Salisbury, and then left Salisbury, there is nothing whatsoever about their movements whilst they were there. And just to remind you, the charge against the men relates to what they did in Salisbury, not in London.

Why is this and what does it indicate?

Well, it isn’t that they don’t have evidence of the movements of the two men. One of the commenters here, Peter, has established via a Freedom of Information request to Wiltshire Council that all CCTV cameras were operational on both days, and that all footage in relation to the March incident was handed over to the Counter-Terrorism Police.

This means that The Met has detailed footage of the two men in Salisbury on 3rd March, but not only have they chosen to release none of it, apart from one still image of the men at Salisbury station heading back to London, but they have also declined to give any actual detail of the men’s movements in the town that day. Surely if the footage exists — which it does — then The Met ought to be able to tell us what the two men were doing and where they went. But the extraordinary thing is, not only did they fail to do this, but they actually appealed for help in establishing their movements:

“We’d also like to hear from anyone who saw them while they were in the UK between Friday, 2 March and Sunday, 4 March. We are particularly interested in establishing as much as possible about their movements during the period 2pm to 4.30pm on Saturday, 3 March, and 11.30am to 2pm on Sunday, 4 March.”

Why would they need help when plenty of CCTV exists for them to be able to trace their movements?

Actually, it gets worse. Despite the existence of CCTV showing the men’s movements, but still apparently not knowing where the men went, The Met felt fit to draw the following conclusion:

“We assess that this trip was for reconnaissance of the Salisbury area and do not believe that there was any risk to the public from their movements on this day.”

Reconnaissance? What on earth is this supposed to mean? Did they go and check out Mr Skripal’s house that day? If so, where is the CCTV footage of them doing so? Presumably there would be footage of them walking past the Shell garage on that day too. Where, then, is it (and again, I’m asking for footage, not a still image)?

The use of the word reconnaissance is simply absurd. It makes it sound like they were involved in some clandestine military operation, behind enemy lines, checking out the lie of the land. But actually they were in the rather genteel city of Salisbury, and could have checked their destination using Google maps. Or were they just checking that the door had a handle?

Let’s see how The Met fares on the Sunday:

On Sunday, 4 March, they made the same journey from the hotel, again using the underground from Bow to Waterloo station at approximately 8.05am, before continuing their journey by train to Salisbury. CCTV shows them in the vicinity of Mr Skripal’s house and we believe that they contaminated the front door with Novichok. They left Salisbury and returned to Waterloo Station, arriving at approximately 4.45pm and boarded the London Underground at approximately 6.30pm to London Heathrow Airport.”

Again, most of this is fluff. What has their journey from their hotel to Waterloo got to do with what they are charged with doing in Salisbury? What has their return journey to Waterloo and on to Heathrow got to do with what they are charged with doing in Salisbury? Not much. The charge against them is that they carried out an assassination attempt in Salisbury, not that they got on a train here, a tube there, and an airplane somewhere else.

Ah but they do mention what happened in Salisbury, don’t they? Well, yes they do, but as I pointed out in my previous piece, it’s actually a deeply misleading claim. The CCTV footage released by The Met does not show the men in the vicinity of Mr Skripal’s house; it shows them on a different street altogether, hundreds of yards away.

The entirety of the evidence given verbally by Mr Basu of the two men’s activities in Salisbury on both the 3rd and 4th March, is therefore this:

“CCTV shows them in the vicinity of Mr Skripal’s house and we believe that they contaminated the front door with Novichok.”

That’s it! Nothing more! Not exactly compelling, is it?

But here’s the thing: The Met knows exactly where the men went on both days, because it has an awful lot of CCTV footage showing where they went. Yet not only does it refuse to release footage, but it skips out all details of Saturday’s Salisbury wanderings, and makes a misleading statement about the Sunday wanderings. I would submit that the most plausible explanation for this is not that the CCTV doesn’t exist (it does). Nor is it that it exists, but is deemed too sensitive to be released (it isn’t). Rather, the most plausible explanation is that it does exist, but it doesn’t actually back up the claims being made.

Even if the Bellingcat claims turn out to be true, it doesn’t alter this crucial point: The Metropolitan Police has so far failed to provide any convincing evidence that the two suspects they have named walked up to 47 Christie Miller Road and placed “Novichok” on the door handle. They have CCTV footage of the men in Salisbury on 3rd and 4th March. And yet the actual details of their movements that they have given out are in reality non-existent. Perhaps Bellingcat would like to answer the question of why this is. Since they appear to have taken over the investigation, that is.

October 10, 2018 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Claims About Alleged GRU Cyberattack on UK-Based TV Inconsistent – Embassy

Sputnik – 07.10.2018

LONDON – The Russian Embassy in London pointed Saturday to the contradictions in the article released by the Financial Times newspaper, which claimed that the Russian military intelligence service GRU had allegedly conducted a cyberattack on the UK-based Islam Channel TV broadcaster in 2015.

On Friday, the Financial Times reported, citing non-designated UK officials, that the GRU officers allegedly hacked the computer network of the UK-based TV station in 2015. The news outlet has not provided any evidence, proving the claims. The newspaper has not specified why Russia would “attack” the broadcaster either. In addition, all the sources of information mentioned in the article were anonymous.

“What is interesting about the article is that it claims that hackers, supposedly, had complete control over the TV channel’s infrastructure during the intrusion. Then [the article] claims that the [UK] Home Office staff called [the broadcaster] and informed it of the cyberattack and says that ‘we [the TV station’s staff] had not noticed any irregularities in the work of the channel until this call.’ The information in this article does not withstand the slightest criticism, it seems it was written in a hurry, and the logical pattern was disrupted. [The article’s] main goal is clear — to bring another accusation against Russia,” a representative of the embassy told reporters.

The representative stressed that the embassy usually refrained from commenting on newspaper articles based on leakages from the UK security services because nobody was willing to take responsibility for the allegations. He added that the UK Foreign Office habitually left Moscow’s requests concerning such publications without answer.

On Thursday, the UK Foreign Office said it assessed “with high confidence” that GRU was “almost certainly” responsible for a series of cyberattacks on political institutions, media outlets and infrastructure across the globe. The Foreign Office mentioned a UK-based TV station among the targets of the attacks.

Later on Thursday, the Dutch Defense Ministry claimed that four Russian citizens holding diplomatic passports had been expelled from the Netherlands in April on suspicion of an attempted cyberattack on the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The Russian Foreign Ministry refuted the claims on Thursday and stressed that the “spymania campaign” unleashed in the Netherlands was seriously hurting bilateral relations with Russia. The ministry pointed out that the Netherlands made the statement ahead of the OPCW opening session, which could set up the “necessary’ political background” to push through some illegal initiatives that Russia opposed.

Canada and the United States subsequently joined the allegations against GRU, claiming that seven Russian military intelligence officials allegedly targeted with cyberattacks the US Westinghouse nuclear power company and multiple anti-doping agencies and athletes. Meanwhile, Russia’s proposal for the establishment of a joint task force on cybersecurity has been earlier rejected by Washington.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has said that the United States “poisoned” Russian-US relations by its new allegations against Russian security services. The diplomat noted the danger of fueling tensions between two nuclear powers.

October 6, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Germany, UK May Slap More Sanctions on Russia Amid Hacking Accusations

Sputnik – 06.10.2018

On Thursday, the US Justice Department announced charges against seven alleged Russian military intelligence officers accused of hacking doping agencies and other international organizations.

Bloomberg has cited Britain’s de facto Deputy Prime Minister David Lidington as saying that London and Berlin may slap more punitive measures on Moscow over the alleged hacking activity of Russian military intelligence.

“We have to be ready to take action either on our own or preferably in concert with allies if appropriate,” Lidington pointed out.

He was echoed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief spokesman Steffen Seibert, who said that additional sanctions against Russia are currently under discussion between Germany and its European partners.

The statement came a few days after the British Foreign Office stated that London had assessed “with high confidence” that the Russian military intelligence service was “almost certainly” responsible for a series of cyberattacks on political institutions, media outlets and infrastructure across the globe, including in Britain.

The Russian Embassy in the UK, in turn, urged British authorities to immediately provide information on Moscow’s alleged attempts to conduct cyberattacks against London.

Meanwhile, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the country’s intelligence had thwarted a hacking attack on the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which was allegedly carried out by four Russian citizens.

A Russian Foreign Ministry source, for its part, stated that there were no and there can’t be any attacks on the OPCW on behalf of Russia, because Moscow already has access to the organization’s files.

The source slammed the Dutch accusations as “an example of some Western states’ policies reaching the point of bigotry,” noting that Western “spy mania is gaining momentum.”

In the US, Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said that the White House had announced “an indictment charging seven Russian military officers with violation of several US criminal laws for malicious cyber activities against the United States and its allies.”

He further claimed that Russia had carried out a cyberattack on a Swiss lab which was analyzing a toxic substance, allegedly used against former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, UK.

Demers also claimed that three Russian agents were previously accused of meddling in the 2016 US election.

Moscow has repeatedly denied claims that it has links to cyberactors attempting to meddle in other states’ domestic affairs, insisting that such claims were unfounded.

In early September, the European Union extended its current sanctions against certain Russian individuals and entities “over actions undermining or threatening the territorial integrity” of Ukraine for another six months.

October 6, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Journalist explains why US doesn’t need hackers to control the world, and it’s hard to disagree

RT | October 5, 2018

‘Russian hackers’ have become the go-to bogeymen for Washington. There’s little mention of American hackers though – probably because they aren’t needed, since most of the internet is a branch of US intelligence.

The US, which is now raising massive alarm over Russia’s supposed efforts to hack everything Americans hold dear, has been refusing to sign a treaty on cyberspace behavior with Russia for almost a decade now. The reason is simple, one Russian-American author explains: Washington doesn’t need a treaty, because it dominates the digital space completely as it is.

Washington’s panic over ‘Russian hackers’ is just a reflection of what it’s been doing to the world for years, says Yasha Levine, the author of ‘Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet.’

And thanks to surveillance programs like PRISM, outed by Edward Snowden 2013, the US doesn’t even need hackers: just by being on social media or using Google, you’re voluntarily surrendering your data to the NSA.

Far from scaling back its snooping after Snowden pulled the curtain on PRISM, the US has multiplied its efforts. Citing ‘national security’, lawmakers renewed the NSA’s sweeping spying powers this year. Domestic phone surveillance tripled last year, user data requests to Apple doubled, and user data requests to Google were at an all-time high.

And just recently, the ‘Five eyes’ powers – the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia – issued a memo demanding that tech giants implement ‘backdoors’ to allow governments direct access to users’ encrypted data.

The entire narrative of cyber threats to the “good guys” US is a smokescreen to hide the unenviable fact: it’s the US that’s the apex predator of the digital ocean.

October 6, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Russian hackers’ mania spreads: Germany joins accusations against Moscow

RT | October 5, 2018

Berlin has joined the accusatory chorus of Western countries claiming that it was “almost certain” that Russian military intelligence was behind the activities of the elusive Fancy Bear hacker group.

A day late for the party, Berlin has joined the barrage of accusations against Moscow, which – supposedly – “hacked” virtually everything.

“We have full confidence in the assessment of the British and Dutch authorities,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Friday.

On Thursday, the UK and the Netherlands claimed that Russian state hackers were behind the attacks on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and other institutions.

The US, in turn, indicted seven “GRU operatives” for a series of alleged hacks, while Canada blamed Moscow for waging “malicious cyber-operations.”

“The government is also almost certain that the Russian GRU secret service is behind the APT28 campaign,” Seibert added.

The so-called APT28 hacker group, also known as Fancy Bear, has been repeatedly accused of having connections, or even being a unit of Russian intelligence. While little evidence is available to back up the bold claims, the main argument is that the group supposedly targets only those states and institutions which the Russian government doesn’t like.

It’s not the first time when Berlin has accused the Kremlin of waging massive hacking campaigns. The idea that Moscow might wish to tamper with the electoral process in Germany was first voiced by Chancellor Angela Merkel in November 2016.

“We already know that we have to deal with reports from Russia, also with cyber-attacks from Russian sources or even with the reports from which we are confronted to some extent with false information,” Merkel said at the time.

The government claims, however, were challenged in parliament, with an MP demanding some evidence to back up the accusations. In December 2016, Berlin was forced to admit that no solid evidence of such activities existed.

German intelligence has also claimed that the elusive “Russian hackers” carried out numerous “cyberattacks on the German Bundestag” over the past years. Then-chief of the German state security agency (BfV), Hans-Georg Maassen, however, admitted in September 2017, that it was “almost impossible for the intelligence services to find irrefutable evidence that Russia, for example, was behind the cyber-attacks on the Bundestag.”

Ahead of the 2017 general election, however, German spies sounded the alarm over imminent “Russian meddling” again. This summer, Berlin admitted it observed “a decline in Russian cyber activity possibly connected to the election.” While German spies did not bother to provide even a speck of evidence to pin this “activity” on Russia, they were not shy to give themselves a pat on the back, claiming that the said “decline” was a result of their efforts.

Read more:

Berlin Says Trusts UK, Dutch Claims on Russian Cyberattacks Against OPCW

October 6, 2018 Posted by | Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Top Russian senator blasts Norway spy probe against employee

RT | October 5, 2018

The Russian Upper House speaker described the Norwegian spy probe against one of the chamber’s employees as absurd and arbitrary. She speculated that the man is being held so that evidence could be fabricated to back the charges.

Russian Upper House Speaker Valentina Matviyenko told reporters that she addressed the issue of Mikhail Bochkarev’s detention in a personal message to the head of the Norwegian Parliament, but only received a polite, formal reply.

She added that Bochkarev has worked in the Russian Upper House for 25 years and was never involved with any special services.

You know, this resembles the theater of the absurd. He was arrested on invented charges and the fact that the court has recently extended his detention gives the impression that someone is now fabricating some non-existing proof in this case.

Matviyenko went on to describe Norway’s behavior in this situation as an attempt to pressure Bochkarev, and hinted that the whole story could be the result of a planned provocation.

She also promised that the Russian side would continue to defend its citizens and said that both the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Upper House would demand Bochkarev’s immediate release. The top Russian senator also insisted that nothing would ever come out of this story, comparing it to a soap bubble.

Mikail Bochkarev, a member of the Russian Upper House staff, was detained in late September in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, where he took part in an event hosted by the European Center for Parliamentary Research and Documentation.

He was accused of “gathering data.” The Norwegian media said the charges against him were based on the fact that he moved through the building where the event was being held, rather than staying in one place. The Norwegian special services saw this behavior as a possible sign of illegal data gathering.

In subsequent press comments, Norwegian PM Erna Solberg emphasized that the probe into the Russian citizen’s alleged wrongdoings is purely criminal in nature and has nothing to do with politics.

Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that the charges against Bochkarev were false, speculating that Norway started the case in hopes of blackmailing Russia into swapping its citizen for Norwegian national Frode Berg, who was detained in Moscow in December 2017 and remains in custody to this day. The Russian authorities suspect him of espionage.

Zakharova said, however, that unlike Mikhail Bochkarev, who was arrested while leaving Norway, Frode Berg was caught in the act.

October 5, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

NATO Coordinates Information War on Russia

Strategic Culture Foundation | 05.10.2018

The US, Britain and other NATO allies upped the ante this week with a coordinated campaign of information war to criminalize Russia. Moscow dismissed the wide-ranging claims as “spy mania”. But the implications amount to a grave assault recklessly escalating international tensions with Russia.

The accusations that the Kremlin is running a global cyberattack operation are tantamount to accusing Russia of “acts of war”. That, in turn, is creating a pretext for NATO powers to carry out “defensive” actions on Moscow, including increased economic and diplomatic sanctions against Russia, as well as “counter” cyberattacks on Russian territory.

This is a highly dangerous dynamic that could ultimately lead to military confrontation between nuclear-armed states.

There are notably suspicious signs that the latest accusations against Russia are a coordinated effort to contrive false charges.

First, there is the concerted nature of the claims. British state intelligence initiated the latest phase of information war by claiming that Russian military intelligence, GRU, was conducting cyberattacks on infrastructure and industries in various countries, costing national economies “millions of pounds” in damages.

Then, within hours of the British claims, the United States and Canada, as well as NATO partners Australia and New Zealand followed up with similar highly publicized accusations against Russia. It is significant that those Anglophone countries, known as the “Five Eyes”, have a long history of intelligence collaboration going back to the Cold War years against the Soviet Union.

The Netherlands, another NATO member, added to the “spy mania” by claiming it had expelled four members of Russian state intelligence earlier this year for allegedly trying to hack into the headquarters of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), based in The Hague.

There then followed predictable condemnations of Russia from the NATO leadership and the European Union. NATO was holding a summit in Brussels this week. It is therefore plausible that the timing of the latest claims of Russian “malign activity” was meant to coordinate with the NATO summit.

More sanctions against Moscow are expected – further intensifying tensions from already existing sanctions. More sinister were NATO warnings that the military alliance would take collective action over what it asserts are Russian cyberattacks.

This is creating a “casus belli” situation whereby the 29 NATO members can invoke a common defense clause for punitive actions against Russia. Given the rampant nature of the claims of “Russian interference” and that certain NATO members are rabidly Russophobic, it is all too easily dangerous for cyber “false flags” to be mounted in order to criminalize Moscow.

Another telltale factor is that the claims made this week by Britain and the other NATO partners are an attempt to integrate all previous claims of Russian “malign activity”.

The alleged cyber hacking by Russia, it is claimed, was intended to disrupt OPCW investigations into the purported poison-assassination plot against Sergei Skripal, the former Russian spy living in Britain; the alleged hacking was also claimed to be aimed at disrupting investigations into alleged chemical weapons atrocities committed by the Syrian government and by extension Syria’s ally Russia; the alleged Russian hacking claims were also linked to charges of Olympic athletes doping, as well as “interference in US elections”; and even, it was asserted, Russia trying to sabotage investigations into the downing of the Malaysian civilian airliner over Ukraine in 2014.

Up to now, it seems, all such wildly speculative anti-Russia narratives have failed to gain traction among world public opinion. Simply due to the lack of evidence to support these Western accusations. The Skripal affair has perhaps turned into the biggest farce. British government claims that the Kremlin ordered an assassination have floundered to the point of ridicule.

It is hardly coincidence that Britain and its NATO allies are compelled to shore up the Skripal narrative and other anti-Russian narratives with the ramped up “global cyberattack” claims made this week.

Photographs of alleged Russian intelligence operatives have been published. Potboiler indictments have been filed – again – by US law enforcement agencies. Verdicts have been cast by NATO governments and compliant news media of Russian state culpability, without Moscow being given a fair chance to respond to the “highly likely” claims. Claims and narratives are being accelerated, integrated and railroaded.

It is well-established from the explosive disclosures by Edward Snowden, among other whistleblowers, that the American CIA and its partners have the cyber tools to create false “digital fingerprints” for the purpose of framing up enemies. Moreover, the vast cyber surveillance operations carried out by the US and its “Five Eyes” partners – much of which is illegal – is an ironic counterpoint to accusations being made against Russia.

It is also possible in the murky world of all foreign states conducting espionage and information-gathering that attribution of wrongdoing by Russia can be easily exaggerated and made to look like a campaign of cyberattacks.

There is a lawless climate today in the US and other Western states where mere allegations are cited as “proof”. The legal principle of being innocent until proven guilty has been jettisoned. The debacle in the US over a Supreme Court judge nominee is testament to the erosion of due process and legal standards.

But what is all the more reprehensible and reckless is the intensification of criminalization of Russia – based on flimsy “evidence” or none at all. When such criminalization is then used to “justify” calls for a US-led naval blockade of Russian commercial oil trade the conditions are moving inevitably towards military confrontation. The blame for belligerence lies squarely with the NATO powers.

A further irony is that the “spy mania” demonizing Russia is being made necessary because of the wholly unsubstantiated previous claims of Moscow’s malfeasance and “aggression”. Illusions and lies are being compounded with yet more bombastic, illusory claims.

NATO’s information war against Russia is becoming a self-fulfilling “psy-op”. In the deplorable absence of normal diplomatic conduct and respect for international law, NATO’s information war is out of control. It is pushing relations with Russia to the abyss.

October 5, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

More Cold War extremism and crises

By Stephen F. Cohen | The Nation | October 4, 2018

Overshadowed by the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, US-Russian relations grow ever more perilous.

Emphasizing growing Cold War extremism in Washington and war-like crises in US-Russian relations elsewhere, Cohen comments on the following examples:

Russiagate, even though none of its core allegations have been proven, is now a central part of the new Cold War, severely limiting President Trump’s ability to conduct crisis-negotiations with Moscow and further vilifying Russian President Putin for having ordered “an attack on America” during the 2016 presidential election. The New York Times and The Washington Post have been leading promoters of the Russiagate narrative even though several of its foundational elements have been seriously challenged, even discredited.

Nonetheless, both papers recently devoted thousands of words to retelling the same narrative, on September 20 and 23 respectively, along with its obvious fallacies. For example, Paul Manafort, during the crucial time he was advising then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, was not “pro-Russian” but pro-European Union. And contrary to insinuations, General Michael Flynn did nothing wrong or unprecedented in having conversations with a representative of the Kremlin on behalf of President-elect Trump. Many other presidents-elect had instructed top aides to do the same. The epic retellings of the Russiagate narrative by both papers, at extraordinary length, were riddled with similar mistakes and unproven allegations. (Nonetheless, a prominent historian, albeit one seemingly little informed both about Russiagate documents and about Kremlin leadership, characterized the widely discredited anti-Trump Steele dossier—the source of many such allegations—as “increasingly plausible.”)

Astonishingly, neither the Times nor the Post give any credence to the emphatic statement made at least one week before by Bob Woodward—normally considered the most authoritative chronicler of Washington’s political secrets—that after two years of research he had found “no evidence of collusion” between Trump and Russia.

For the Times and Post and other mainstream media outlets, Russiagate has become, it seems, a kind of cult journalism that no counter-evidence or analysis can dint and thus itself is a major contributing factor to the new and more dangerous Cold War. Still worse, what began nearly two years ago as complaints about Russian “meddling” in the US presidential campaign has become for the New Yorker and other publications an accusation that the Kremlin actually put Trump in the White House. For this reckless charge, with its inherent contempt for the good sense of American voters, there is no convincing evidence—nor any precedent in American history.

Meanwhile, current and former US officials are making nearly unprecedented threats against Moscow. NATO ambassador Kay Bailey Hutchinson threatened to “take out” any Russian missiles she thought violated a 1987 arms treaty, a step that would risk nuclear war. The Secretary of the Interior threatened a “naval blockade” of Russia. In a perhaps unprecedented, undiplomatic Russophobic outburst, UN ambassador Nikki Haley declared that “lying, cheating and rogue behavior” are a “norm of Russian culture.”

These may be outlandish statements by untutored appointed political figures, though they inescapably raise the question: who is making Russia policy in Washington—President Trump with his avowed policy of “cooperating with Russia,” or someone else?

But how to explain, other than as unbridled extremism, statements by a former US ambassador to Moscow and longtime professor of Russian politics, who appears to be the mainstream media’s leading authority on Russia? According to him, Russia today is “a rogue state,” its policies “criminal actions,” and the “world’s worst threat.” It must be countered by “preemptive sanctions that would GO into effect automatically”—indeed, “every day,” if deemed necessary. Considering the “crippling” sanctions now being prepared by a bipartisan group of US senators—their actual reason and purpose apparently unknown even to them—this would be nothing less than a declaration of war against Russia: economic war, but war nonetheless.

Several other new Cold War fronts are also fraught with hot war, but today none more than Syria. Another reminder occurred on September 17, when Syrian war planes accidentally shot down an allied Russian surveillance plane, killing all fifteen crew members. The cause, it was generally agreed, was subterfuge by Israeli warplanes in the area. The reaction in Moscow was highly indicative—potentially ominous.

At first, Putin, who had developed good relations with Israel’s political leadership, said the incident was an accident, an example of the fog of war. His own Ministry of Defense, however, loudly protested, blaming Israel. Putin quickly retreated, adopting a much more hardline position, and in the end vowed to send to Syria Russia’s highly effective S-300 surface-to-air defense system, a prize both Syria and Iran have requested in vain for years.

Clearly, Putin is not the ever “aggressive Kremlin Kremlin autocrat” so often portrayed in US mainstream media. A moderate by nature (in the Russian context), he governs by balancing powerful conflicting groups and interests. In this case, he was countered by longstanding hardliners (“hawks”) in the security establishment.

Second, if the S-300s are installed in Syria (they will be operated by Russians, not Syrians), Putin can in effect impose a “no-fly zone” over that country, which has been torn by war due, in no small part, to the presence of several major foreign powers. (Russia and Iran are there legally, the United States and Israel are not.) If so, it will be a new “red line” that Washington and Tel Aviv must decide whether or not to cross. Considering the mania in Washington, it’s hard to be confident that wisdom will prevail.

All of this unfolded on approximately the third anniversary of Russia’s military intervention in Syria, in September 2015. At that time, Washington pundits denounced Putin’s “adventure” and were sure it would “fail.” Three years later, “Putin’s Kremlin” has destroyed the vicious Islamic State’s grip on large parts of Syria, all but restored President Assad’s control over most of the country, and has become the ultimate arbiter of Syria’s future. President Trump would do best by joining Moscow’s peace process, though it is unlikely Washington’s mostly Democratic Russiagate party will permit him to do so. (For perspective, recall that, in 2016, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton promised to impose a US no-fly zone over Syria to defy Russia.)

There is also this. As the US-led “liberal world order” disintegrates, not only in Syria, a new alliance is emerging between Russia, China, Iran, and possibly NATO member Turkey. It will be a real “threat” only if Washington makes it one, as it has Russia in recent years.

Finally, the US-Russian proxy war in Ukraine has recently acquired a new dimension. In addition to the civil war in Donbass, Moscow and Kiev have begun to challenge each other’s ships in the Sea of Azov, near the vital Ukrainian port city of Mariupol. Trump is being pressured to supply Kiev with naval and other weapons to wage this evolving war, yet another potential tripwire. Here too the president would do best by putting his administration’s weight behind the long-stalled Minsk peace accords. Here too, this seemed to be his original intention, but it has proven to be yet another approach, it now seems, thwarted by Russiagate.

Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University and a contributing editor of The Nation.

October 4, 2018 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Russian Embassy in London: UK Claims About Russian Hack Attacks – Disinformation

Sputnik – 04.10.2018

UK authorities earlier claimed “with high confidence” that the Russian military intelligence service, GRU, was “almost certainly” responsible for a series of cyber attacks on political institutions, media, and infrastructure in various countries, including the United Kingdom, vowing to respond.

“This statement is irresponsible. As usual, it is not supported by any evidence and is just another element of the anti-Russian campaign conducted by the British government,” the spokesman for the Russian Embassy in the UK told Sputnik.

According to the embassy, the statement was intentionally published during the NATO summit in Brussels, as many countries in the bloc have announced plans to establish cybersecurity forces.

He also mentioned that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had offered to provide expert consultations for the UK back in 2017, during a visit of then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to Moscow. London, however, did not respond to the offer, as it had “nothing to say on the subject,” the diplomat concluded.

October 4, 2018 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

NATO Supports UK, Dutch Cyberattack Accusations Against Russia – Stoltenberg

Sputnik – 04.10.2018

NATO stands in solidarity with London and Amsterdam in their accusations against Russia of conducting cyberattacks and urges Moscow to change its behavior, the alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, stated.

“NATO Allies stand in solidarity with the decision by the Dutch and British governments to call out Russia on its blatant attempts to undermine international law and institutions. Russia must stop its reckless pattern of behavior, including the use of force against its neighbors, attempted interference in election processes, and widespread disinformation campaigns,” Stoltenberg said in a statement.

In response, NATO will continue to strengthen its defense against hybrid threats and cyber attacks, he stressed.

“Today, Defence Ministers discussed the progress we are making in setting up a new Cyber Operations Centre, integrating national cyber capabilities into our missions and operations, and bolstering our cyber resilience,” the secretary general concluded.

Earlier in the day, the UK Foreign Office accused Russian foreign intelligence service GRU of cyber attacks on political institutions, enterprises, media and sports, saying the GRU was “almost certainly” involved in the theft of confidential medical documents of several athletes published in August 2017 by WADA.

Also on Thursday, Dutch Defense Minister Ank Bijleveld said that four Russian citizens had been expelled from the Netherlands on April 13 on the suspicion of an attempted cyber attack on the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), noting that the suspects had diplomatic passports.

A NATO defense ministers’ meeting is being held in Brussels on October 3-4.

Western officials put forward accusations against “Russian hackers” on a regular basis. Russia has repeatedly refuted allegations of interfering in other countries’ internal affairs and elections.

October 4, 2018 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Canada joins international chorus accusing Russia of ‘malicious cyber attacks’

RT | October 4, 2018

The Canadian government has joined its allies to accuse Russia of being behind a slew of recent “malicious” cyber attacks, including on the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the World Anti-Doping Agency.

The move from Canada comes as the US introduces new charges against a number of alleged Russian intelligence officers which it accuses of hacking the anti-doping agency.

A statement issued on Thursday by Global Affairs Canada said that “a series of malicious cyber-operations by the Russian military” had been exposed, including an alleged attempted hack on the organization responsible for investigating the Salisbury poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in March — an attack which the Russian government has denied involvement in and which British authorities have not been able to conclusively blame Moscow for.

The Global Affairs statement said the acts “form part of a broader pattern of activities by the Russian government” which lies “outside the bounds of appropriate behavior” and demonstrate “a disregard for international law and undermine the rules-based international order”. Canada called on countries that value “international order” to “come together in its defence.”

“Some of these acts have a connection with Canada,” the statement added, suggesting that Canada was also a target for alleged Russian cyber attacks and citing a 2016 attack on the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport whose systems were compromised with malware which enabled unauthorized access to the organization’s network. “The Government of Canada assesses with high confidence that the GRU was responsible for this compromise,” the Canadian statement said.

Earlier on Thursday, the Netherlands said it had expelled four Russian intelligence officers in April who they alleged had targeted the Hague-based OPCW.

Dutch Defense Minister Ank Bijleveld said the operation was disrupted on April 13 and the four men in question had later been expelled from the country. Russia has denied any involvement in hacking and has called the recent allegations ‘spy mania’.

October 4, 2018 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Urban’s Tale Clears Away Some of the Smoke and Mirrors in Salisbury

By Rob Slane | The Blog Mire | October 3, 2018

There’s enough smoke and mirrors in the Salisbury poisonings to make the Magic Circle blush. It is impossible for the public to understand what happened, and who did what to whom, not only because the details don’t add up, but because many of the so-called “facts” that have been released are suspicious in and of themselves. Whichever aspect of the case we look at to try to make sense, we can never quite be sure that we are not going down a rabbit trail, since the “facts” we base our case on may in fact not be facts at all.

What we can do, though, is to keep looking at the official claims. The investigators of the case obviously have access to information that ordinary members of the public don’t have, and they have made an accusation. But the big question is whether the claims and the accusation they have made stand up to scrutiny – not just to the “facts” that have been given out, but also to logic and to reason.

It is important to begin by defining exactly what the claim is. There are essentially two branches.

The first comes from the British Government, who have declared the Russian State to be responsible for an attempted assassination of Mr Skripal on 4th March (to begin with they hedged their bets between direct responsibility and indirect responsibility, but later statements are more explicit about direct responsibility). In making this claim, because they are not in a court of law, but rather in a Parliament full of remarkably incurious folk, they have been able to able to come up with vague and airy statements about the case, all of which may well be enough to satisfy the incuriosity of that particular audience and their chums in the media, but which are unlikely to satisfy the minds of the more discerning.

The second branch comes from the Metropolitan Police. It is by far the more important of the two, since it is the specific claim of those paid to investigate the case, and is therefore the one upon which the Government’s claim ultimately rests (it is, however, worth reminding ourselves that in the Alice in Wonderland times we now find ourselves in, the Government’s claim came prior to the investigation, not after it, which as anyone acquainted with logic, reason and justice will tell you, is precisely the wrong way around).

To understand The Met’s central claim, however, we must first hack our way through much smoke and navigate our way around many mirrors. So let’s do that by first establishing what the claim is not:

It is not that the Russian state was behind the poisoning (although the Metropolitan Police statement of 5th September does repeats the claim made by the Prime Minister on 14th March, it does so only as a prelude to what is then said about the two suspects, and is not central to its claim about those men).

It is not that Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov are GU Intelligence Officers.

It is not that Ruslan Boshirov is in reality Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga.

All these are peripheral to the central claim made by the Metropolitan Police, and in many ways just smokes and mirrors. The Metropolitan Police’s central claim can be succinctly said to be the following:

“That between 12:10pm and 13:30 on 4th March 2018, the two men named as suspects – Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov – went to the house of Sergei Skripal at 47 Christie Miller Road, Salisbury, on foot, and there applied a high purity, military grade nerve agent to the handle of the front door in an attempt to assassinate Mr Skripal.”

Now, astute readers will realise that the Metropolitan Police has mentioned nothing about the timing that I have stated: 12:10 – 13:30. Nevertheless, that this is what their claim entails is an incontrovertible fact taken from two pieces of information:

a) The image released by the Met of the two men on the Wilton Road at 11:58 (ten minutes after another image showing them arriving at Salisbury train station), which is a little over 5 minutes walk from 47 Christie Miller Road.

b) That Mr Skripal’s car was seen on CCTV driving away from his house at 13:33, towards the town, never to return.

In other words, the claims that the Government first made back in March, when there were still various conflicting claims as to where and how the poisoning took place, have now been distilled into a very particular location — the door handle of 47 Christie Miller Road — and a very specific timeframe — 1 hour and 20 minutes.

To put that into Cluedo terminology, the Metropolitan Police have made an accusation, and it is as follows:

“We believe it was Boshirov and Petrov (perhaps not their real names), at the door handle of Christie Miller Road, with the Novichok, between 12:10 and 13:30.”

The whole of the Government accusations from March onwards are now indelibly connected with this claim, and its truth or otherwise.

Now, the first thing to say about the claim is that the information released by the Met so far has not proven this claim at all. The images showing the two men coming into the UK do not prove the claim. The images of the two men walking around Salisbury do not prove the claim (in fact, they tend to do the opposite, since the idea that two apparently highly trained intelligence officers would not only carry out their deed under cover of daylight, walking together at all times, but would then spend almost two hours traipsing around town are frankly not very credible). The image showing the two men on the Wilton Road does not prove the claim, since it is some 600 yards from the alleged crime scene.

It may all be enough to convince the nation’s MPs, but it ought not be enough to convince anyone still committed to reason and logic.

However, comments in a new book by the BBC reporter, Mark Urban, reveal a couple of things that are of crucial interest in light of the claim. Here is the first:

“Urban discovered that Skripal spent much of his day watching Russia’s Channel One, a pro-Kremlin state broadcaster. He adopted ‘the Kremlin line in many matters’, the journalist writes, ‘even while sitting in his MI6-purchased house’, especially over Moscow’s fraught relations with Ukraine.”

The key part I want to draw your attention to is that, according to Urban, Mr Skripal’s house was “MI6-purchased.” This may come as no surprise to those who have been paying attention, but it does at least clear away some of the smokes and mirrors. So the house that Mr Skripal lived in, and the one that he was apparently targeted in, was owned by MI6. And the reason for this, as the British media seem to have belatedly discovered, is that Mr Skripal was still working for MI6.

Mr Urban also says this:

“The people closest to him [Sergei] were probably what he called his ‘Team’ — the officers from MI5 and MI6 who looked after his welfare. He spoke about them with affection and had a special mobile phone that went directly to their duty officer.”

Hopefully, you’re beginning to get the picture. Sergei Skripal was not only active for MI6, and not only lived in a house which was purchased by MI6 but – according to Mr Urban – he had MI5 and MI6 officers assigned to protect him, as well as a direct line should he need to get in contact. As an aside, would it be cheeky to enquire whether this particular phone was one of the ones that was allegedly made untraceable on 4th March?

Given what Mr Urban says about the house, the phone and the protection, let me ask a few simple questions:

  1. How conceivable is it that the house did not have some kind of security measures in place, including CCTV cameras?
  2. How conceivable is it that Russian intelligence wouldn’t have assumed that Mr Skripal’s house would have had some kind of security measures in place, including CCTV cameras covering the front door?
  3. How conceivable is it that Russian intelligence would have chosen a method of assassination that was not only highly untargeted, but which was practically guaranteed to result in the filming of the assassins committing the crime?

To discerning persons, the answer to all three questions is quite obvious, though perhaps not to the nation’s MPs or media.

But let’s just suspend reason and logic for a moment, and imagine that despite the extremely high probability that Russian intelligence would have assumed Mr Skripal’s house to be well protected, and the absurdly low probability that they would then have chosen this particular method of assassination, they had still carried out the attack in the way the Met claims. What would it mean?

It would mean that there has been a massive failure on the part of British intelligence to protect one of their own assets in his own house — a house which they owned, and which should therefore have been made safe. In which case, why are there no questions being asked about this failure in the House of Commons? Or do we already know the reason for that.

Let me spell it out even more clearly. There only three options here:

Option 1: Mr Skripal’s MI6-bought house did indeed have the kind of security measures you would expect it to have had, given that Mr Skripal was actively working for British Intelligence. In which case, if the central claim of the Metropolitan Police is true, there must be CCTV footage of the two suspects, applying “high purity, military grade nerve agent” to the door handle.

Option 2: Mr Skripal’s MI6-bought house didn’t have the kind of security measures one would expect it to have had, given that Mr Skripal was actively working for British Intelligence. In which case, if the central claim of the Metropolitan Police is true, does this not constitute a failure of security of the highest order?

Option 3: Mr Skripal’s MI6-bought house may or may not have had the kind of security measures you would expect it to have – but it’s all neither here nor there because the door handle assassination claim is untrue.

The discerning amongst you will make your own minds up as to which of these possible scenarios is correct.

October 3, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

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