The Skripal case and the misuse of ‘intelligence’
By Alexander Mercouris | The Duran | April 5, 2018
The events of the last few days in the Skripal case provide an object lesson of why in criminal investigations the rules of due process should always be adhered to. The reason the British now find themselves in difficulties is because they have not adhered to them.
This despite the fact that – as they all too often like to remind us – it was the British themselves who largely created them.
The single biggest unexplained mystery about the Skripal case is why it attracted so much attention so quickly.
Within hours of Sergey and Yulia Skripal being found passed out on a bench the British media were feverishly speculating that they had been poisoned by Russia.
This despite the fact that no information at that point existed which warranted such speculation, and despite pleas for the investigation to be allowed to take its course from the police and from the government minister responsible for the police, Home Secretary Amber Rudd (who has ever since been conspicuously silent about the whole affair).
Within three days of Sergey and Yulia Skripal being found passed out on a bench – and before any information linking the incident to Russia had become publicly available – the British government’s COBRA committee was meeting – a fact which caused me incredulity – during which a highly revealing article in The Times of London has now revealed it was already agreed that Russia was “almost certainly” responsible.
A Whitehall source added: “We knew pretty much by the time of the first Cobra [the emergency co-ordination briefing that took place the same week] that it was overwhelmingly likely to come from Russia.” (bold italics added)
“It” of course refers to the chemical agent which poisoned Sergey and Yulia Skripal, with the clear implication that by the date of the first COBRA meeting on 7th March 2018 – three days after Sergey and Yulia Skripal were found in the bench – “it” had already been identified as a Novichok “of a type developed by Russia”.
If what this article says is true – and despite the fact that the article is full of tendentious reporting (of which more below) on this one point I am inclined to believe what it says – then that must mean either (1) that Porton Down is highly familiar with the properties of Novichok agents if it can identify the agent used so quickly; or (2) the British authorities already had “other” information before Porton Down completed its analysis which caused them to think that Sergey and Yulia Skripal were poisoned with a chemical agent “of a type developed by Russia”.
If it was the first then note that Porton Down took no more than three days to identify the poison as a Novichok despite the fact (1) that Novichok agents are not in general use and are supposed to be very rare and there is no known instance of their having been used before (it seems that contrary to previous reports the Kivelidi murder in 1995 in Russia did not involve use of a Novichok); and (2) that confirming Porton Down’s analysis that the poison is a Novichok is taking the OPCW’s experts two weeks.
If it was the second, and the COBRA committee came to its view on 7th March 2018 that Russia was ‘almost certainly responsible’ before Porton Down had identified the poison, then the last few weeks have been an exercise in smoke-and-mirrors, with the British authorities pretending that the reason for their belief in Russian responsibility was that the poison used was a Novichok, whereas in reality they came to that belief for some entirely different reason.
If so then that might partially [explain] why Porton Down and the French scientists were able to identify the chemical agent so quickly.
They were able to identify the poison as a Novichok by the weekend prior to Theresa May’s statement to the House of Commons on Monday 12th March 2018 because they were told in advance what to look for.
I do not know which of these alternatives is true. However, for what it’s worth, I believe it is the second because it is the one which makes most sense in light of the known facts.
That this is the likeliest explanation of what happened finds support from The Times of London article which I cited earlier. It contains this highly revealing claim:
Security services believe that they have pinpointed the location of the covert Russian laboratory that manufactured the weapons-grade nerve agent used in Salisbury, The Times has learnt.
Ministers and security officials were able to identify the source using scientific analysis and intelligence in the days after the attempted murder of Sergei and Yulia Skripal a month ago, according to security sources.
Britain knew about the existence of the facility where the novichok poison was made before the attack on March 4, it is understood……
Security sources do not claim 100 per cent certainty but the source has insisted that they have a high degree of confidence in the location. They also believe that the Russians conducted tests to see whether novichok could be used for assassinations.
The disclosure is the latest part of Britain’s intelligence case against Russia, which has been undermined this week by a series of blunders. (bold italics added)
In other words the entire British case against Russia derives not from identification of the poison as a Novichok but from information about the supposed existence of a ‘secret laboratory’ making Novichok in Russia which British intelligence had obtained – or thinks it had obtained – before the attack took place.
That the British case against Russia is intelligence based and is not based on the fact that the poison used was (allegedly) a Novichok is further shown by one case of manipulation of language and one case of crude editing in some of the things which have been said.
The example of manipulation of language is the constant British harping on the fact that the Novichok allegedly used in the attack is “military grade”.
I am not a chemist or a chemical weapons expert but I cannot see how it is possibly to say such a thing given that no military – not even the Russian military – has apparently ever stockpiled Novichok agents for use as a military weapon. How can one say therefore that any particular sample of Novichok is “military grade” if no military has ever stockpiled or used it?
As for the example of editing, it is one which I admit I previously overlooked but which was noticed by the invaluable Craig Murray, whose commentary on the Skripal case has been nothing short of outstanding.
The editing is of what was said by Porton Down chief executive Gary Aitkenhead. Since it was Craig Murray who noticed it rather than discuss it myself I will link and quote to what Craig Murray has to say about it
It is in this final statement that, in a desperate last minute attempt to implicate Russia, Aitkenhead states that making this nerve agent required
“extremely sophisticated methods to create, something probably only within the capabilities of a state actor.”
Very strangely, Sky News only give the briefest clip of the interview on this article on their website reporting it. And the report is highly tendentious: for example it states
However, he confirmed the substance required “extremely sophisticated methods to create, something only in the capabilities of a state actor”.
Deleting the “probably” is a piece of utterly tendentious journalism by Sky’s Paul Kelso.
I did not notice that the key word “probably” had been deleted from what Aitkenhead had said, and as a result my previous article wrongly quoted his words, saying them not as he had said them but as they had been wrongly edited.
It turns out that even what Aitkenhead actually said – that the Novichok agent would have required “extremely sophisticated methods to create, something probably only within the capabilities of a state actor” is almost certainly wrong.
Here is what Craig Murray has to say about that
Motorola sales agent Gary Aitkenhead – inexplicably since January, Chief Executive of Porton Down chemical weapons establishment – said in his Sky interview that “probably” only a state actor could create the nerve agent. That is to admit the possibility that a non state actor could. David Collum, Professor of Organo-Chemistry at Cornell University, infinitely more qualified than a Motorola salesman, has stated that his senior students could do it. Professor Collum tweeted me this morning.
The key point in his tweet is, of course “if asked”. The state and corporate media has not asked Prof. Collum nor any of the Professors of Organic Chemistry in the UK. There simply is no basic investigative journalism happening around this case.
That the entire British case against Russia depends on intelligence is further shown by a further strange development in the case today.
This is that the British authorities are now apparently claiming that the fact that the poison which was used to poison Sergey and Yulia Skripal was supposedly found on Sergey Skripal’s door knob is the ‘smoking gun’ which points to Russia.
Whether that is so or not – and I share Craig Murray’s deep skepticism about this – the alleged presence of the poison on the door knob cannot be the reason why on 7th March 2018 the British government’s COBRA committee had already come to the conclusion that the attack on Sergey and Yulia Skripal “was almost certainly” the work of Russia.
That is because the theory that Sergey and Yulia Skripal were poisoned when they came into contact with the poison on the door knob only appeared several weeks after 7th March 2018.
All the evidence points to fact that the ‘intelligence’ the British government used to come to the conclusion – reached within hours of Sergey and Yulia Skripal being found passed out on a bench – that the attack on them had been carried out by Russia must have come from a human source.
If the British authorities really do possess what they believe to be a Russian assassin’s manual (see Craig Murray again) then that all but confirms it. How else would such a manual have come into their hands?
If that human source really was able to identify the particular poison used in the attack on Sergey and Yulia Skripal in advance, then that suggests a very well informed source indeed.
That might be because the source does have genuine access to secret information about a top secret Russian assassination programme, in which case the Russian authorities will by now almost certainly know who that source is.
However given the complete absence of any other evidence of a top secret Russian assassination programme I must say I doubt this (as I have discussed elsewhere, the Litvinenko case does not provide such evidence).
The alternative – which of course is what many people believe – is that this whole affair is a provocation, staged by someone who then tipped the British off that Novichok – a poison of “a type developed by Russia” but which can in fact easily be made elsewhere (see above) – had been used, whilst misleading the British by giving them a trail of false leads which appeared to point towards Russia.
The claim that the fact that traces of the poison were found on the door knob is the ‘smoking gun’ which points to Russia to my mind rather supports this second theory.
If this claim was made before the poison was found on the door knob it suggests that the source knew in advance that it was there, which would tend to implicate the source in the attack.
If the source provided the information about the alleged ‘assassin’s manual’ after reports appeared in the British media about the poison being found on the door knob – which by the way is what I suspect – then that strongly suggests that the source is adapting its information to the changing news, which suggests manipulation of the intelligence in order to implicate Russia.
Whatever the case the fact that Novichok was probably used to poison Sergey and Yulia Skripal (we will only know with any measure of certainty when the OPCW reports its tests) is not proof that Russia was involved.
The British have got themselves into a total mess by pretending that it is.
They would have avoided getting into this mess – and avoided being manipulated by whoever is giving them ‘secret’ information, if that is what is happening – if they had instead done what their law and traditions dictate they should have done, which is allowed the criminal investigation to take its course.
It bears repeating that at this stage no suspect has been identified in the case and even the theory that Sergey and Yulia Skripal were poisoned by touching Sergey Skripal’s door knob is pure conjecture.
Once again – as in the Litvinenko case and the Russiagate scandal – the course of a criminal investigation has been corrupted by the misuse of ‘intelligence’.
How the Ex-Spy Case is Transforming UK Media Into Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’
Sputnik – April 5, 2018
The admission by scientists from the Porton Down defense lab that that they could not actually verify the source of the nerve agent used to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter has not stopped British media from blaming Russia for the affair, or calling on London to take an even tougher stance against the Russians.
Unnamed ‘security sources’ have told The Times that they may have pinpointed the location of the “covert Russian laboratory” which allegedly created the chemical agent used to poison the Skripals.
According to the newspaper, government ministers and security officials “were able to identify the source using scientific analysis and intelligence” soon after the attack. “We knew pretty much by the time of the first Cobra [the emergency coordination briefing] that it was overwhelmingly likely to come from Russia,” a Whitehall source said.
The Times’ source insisted that the security services have a “high degree of confidence” regarding the location where the chemical was produced, but admitted they were not 100% certain.
Screenshot of The Times’ story.
Not to be outdone, The Sun ran a similar story, claiming that a lab run by Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service in the Moscow district of Yasenevo was the “likely” creator of the poison. The tabloid paraphrased unnamed ‘security sources’, who told the newspaper that the Russian lab is “one of a handful of labs in the world that produces the nerve agent.”
Screengrab of The Sun article.
No Proof Needed
The pair of stories comes 48 hours after Porton Down Defense Science & Technology Laboratory chief Gary Aitkenhead’s admission that the military could not definitively conclude that the nerve agent believed used in the Skripal case was of Russian origin.
The new media efforts to implicate Russia, using unnamed sources and terms such as “likely” and “high degree of confidence” is reminiscent of the kind of language used by the British government in the days and weeks following the poisoning. However, following Tuesday’s revelation by Mr. Aitkenhead, the government and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in particular have been reeling from their attempts to definitively claim Russian involvement in the Skripal case.
Some outlets, including The Independent, decided to meet Aitkenhead’s revelations with a stiff upper lip, insisting that Russia’s efforts in the Skripal case, including its “ever more reasonable-sounding but insincere offers” to help in the investigation, don’t change “the overwhelming probability that the novichok nerve agent originated in Russia…” It is simply “inconceivable that anyone other than the Russians” could organize such a plot, according to the newspaper.
As for Russia’s demand that London actually prove its allegations, The Independent suggests that “a legal standard of proof is not required,” adding that the kind of proof asked for by Moscow is “impossible to achieve.” The paper even accuses Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and others of ‘buying into’ the arguments presented by the Russians.
The Independent’s ‘bold’ editorial amid the revelation that Porton Down scientists couldn’t prove the poison’s origin.
Ministry of Truth
Also, even as the case against Russia over the Salisbury poisoning slowly falls apart, some UK and other Western media continue an effort to further poison Russia-Western relations, insisting that Russia is surely responsible for the attack, and criticizing their governments for not being tough enough on Moscow.
Bloomberg, for example, has run an editorial arguing that while the recent expulsion of dozens of Russian diplomats from dozens of Western countries is all well and good, “it’s too mild” to put real pressure on Vladimir Putin and the Russian government.Rather, the business news agency says, the West should band together to turn up the heat to “counter the domestic propaganda that Putin has used to increase his popularity and build anti-Western sentiment. Reaching out to Russians in big cities and neighboring countries, where dissent exists and could be encouraged, the US and its allies should make clear that the cause of their complaints is Putin and his helpers, not Russia at large.”
Screenshot of the Bloomberg piece.
Commenting on the Bloomberg piece, Rossiya Segodnya politics contributor Viktor Marakhovsky quipped that the logic of the story was just brilliant: “When Russia appeals to the citizens of Western countries with criticism toward their authorities, this is propaganda and an attempt to assert influence. But when it’s the other way around, this is a fight against internal propaganda and bringing the truth to Russia,” he wrote.
The Guardian issued its own editorial, recommending paying more attention to the ‘home front’ to arrange a nationwide informational manhunt of ‘Putin’s trolls’.
Complaining about The Guardian’s comments section being “infected” by “Russian trolls,” the editorial says that while not all offending accounts or hashtags may be Russian-made, “its sentiments chime sufficiently with the trolls’ aim for them to boost it.”
Screengrab of The Guardian editorial.
In other words, Marakhovsky commented, these non-Russian accounts are de facto “enemies because they think and write the wrong thing.” In this way, the journalist noted, the newspaper is effectively calling on Western media “to assume the functions of the Ministry of Truth – to identify both Russian trolls and those who have been infected by their propaganda… and explain to them why their views are wrong, because they happen to agree with the opinion of the Russian foe.”
Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were hospitalized in Salisbury, southern England on March 4 following a chemical attack thought to involve the A-234 nerve agent. Sergei remains in critical condition; his daughter has regained consciousness and is making a recovery. London almost immediately accused Moscow for the attack, and initiated a series of measures directed against Russia, including the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats. Many of the UK’s allies have followed suit. Moscow has rejected London’s accusations, saying claims of Russian involvement are entirely unsubstantiated.
Tycoon who pushed Magnitsky Act warns EU minister of ‘career ruining’ opposition to Russia-bashing
RT | April 4, 2018
Bill Browder, the financier convicted of tax fraud in Russia and the driving force behind the Magnitsky Act, has taken aim at the Dutch foreign minister, warning him that opposing sanctions against Russia is dangerous.
Foreign Minister Stef Blok should take note of what happened to his Canadian colleague, Stephane Dion, after he opposed the hard line on Russia, Browder tweeted on Tuesday. Blok had voiced opposition to an EU version of the Magnitsky Act, the 2012 US law blacklisting dealings with the Russian government and certain individuals, enacted over “human rights violations.”
Browder’s tweet was pointed out by the Russian embassy in Canada as an instance of foreign meddling.
After Dion expressed opposition to Canada’s adoption of the Magnitsky Act in 2016, Browder made it a “domestic political issue with [the] large Ukrainian diaspora in Canada.” In January 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau replaced Dion with Chrystia Freeland, a Ukrainian-Canadian with a hardline position on Russia. Canada passed its own version of the anti-Russian law in October that year.
Browder followed up the threat to Blok by singling out two Dutch lawmakers, Pieter Omtzigt and Sjoerd Wiemer Sjoerdsma, for advancing the proposal in a 81-69 vote.
Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital, made billions from the 1990s chaos in Russia. He gave up his American citizenship in 1998 to avoid having to pay US taxes, and obtained British citizenship instead. The UK does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, which Browder found useful in 2005, when he was expelled by the Russian government.
Hermitage has been repeatedly investigated for tax fraud. When Sergey Magnitsky, a lawyer hired by Hermitage, was found dead in his Moscow prison cell in 2009, Browder embarked on a global crusade to demonize Russia as a murderous dictatorship.
This resulted in the 2012 passage of the Magnitsky Act, ostensibly enabling the US government to blacklist Russian officials “thought to be responsible” for Magnitsky’s death. In 2016, the law was expanded to have a global scope and blacklist any Russian officials for “corruption” or “human rights violations.” In practice, this has translated into things like stripping Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov of his Instagram account.
Both the original act and the 2016 expansion were championed by Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland), a well-known hardliner on Russia.
Browder is not content to stop there. He has called for using the EU-wide Magnitsky Act to bully the government of Hungary – or “government kleptocrats who are ruining democracy in that country,” as he described it – into submission to Brussels. He is also supporting the Democrats’ campaign to oust Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-California), accusing him of “selling out his integrity and US national security to the Russian FSB.”
Meanwhile, in Russia, a Moscow court convicted Browder of tax fraud in the amount of $79 million and sentenced him to nine years in a penal colony and a fine of 200,000 rubles ($3,470). The sentence was handed down in December 2017.
Blok became the Dutch foreign minister on March 5. His predecessor Halbe Zijlstra resigned in February, after admitting he lied about a 2006 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zijlstra claimed that he had overheard Putin talk about plans for a “Greater Russia.” It later emerged he was never at the meeting.
Down & out at Porton Down: Embarrassment for the UK’s ‘Rush to Blame Russia’ brigade
By Neil Clark | RT | April 4, 2018
The news that the UK’s own chemical weapons scientists can’t confirm that the nerve agent we’re told was used on the Skripals came from Russia is another blow to the credibility of the UK political and media establishment.
They were oh so sure, weren’t they? Or at least they wanted us to think that. For the past four weeks in Britain, we’ve been subjected to a quite hysterical wave of Russophobia, worse than anything we witnessed even at the height of the old Cold War. The poisoning of former MI6 agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who were found in a collapsed state on a bench in the cathedral city of Salisbury on Sunday, March 4, led not only to calls for a boycott of the football World Cup in Russia, but for RT to be taken off the air. The UK expelled 23 Russian diplomats, and then pressured other European countries to do the same. While on Good Friday, in another provocative move, British authorities boarded an Aeroflot plane at Heathrow Airport.
The important principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ enshrined in Article 11 (1) of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was chucked out of the window. In its place we had ‘guilty until proven innocent.’
Instead of waiting until a full and proper investigation could even begin – let alone be concluded – we had a show trial and sentencing, by media, politicians, and members of neocon think tanks.
Anyone who dared to question the official narrative and didn’t support punishing Russia, faced attack from Imperial Truth Enforcers. Former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, who said that Foreign and Commonwealth Office sources had told him that Porton Down scientists were unable to confirm Russian culpability, was labelled a ‘conspiracy theorist’ for observing: “The same people who assured you Saddam Hussein had WMDs now assure you Russian ‘Novichok’ nerve agents are being wielded by Vladimir Putin to attack people on British soil.”
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who condemned the attack but called for a thorough investigation, was savaged not just by the Tories, but also his own Parliamentary party, simply for taking a cautious line in Parliament on March 14.
Thirty-six Labour MPs signed an Early Day Motion – sponsored by arch Corbyn-critic John Woodcock – which declared “This House UNEQUIVOCALLY accepts the Russian state’s culpability for the poisoning of Yulia and Sergei Skripal.” The EDM supported the expulsion of Russian diplomats and the calling of a special meeting of the UN Security Council to “discuss Russia’s use of chemical weapons on UK soil.”
Will these MPs now be apologizing to Russia for accusing them of doing something which most definitely has not been proved? Or does supporting a neocon foreign policy mean never having to say you’re sorry?
It’s not just politicians who need to eat some humble pie.
In all my years in journalism, I have never felt so ashamed of my profession as in the last four weeks. The job of the journalist is to ask questions. To find out the truth. To be absolutely fearless in following leads, wherever they may take you. Today in Britain, political journalism means just parroting the official War Party line. It soon became apparent that the government narrative on Salisbury had more holes in it than a slab of Swiss cheese. But we were all expected, like the good little townsfolk in Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘Emperor’s New Clothes,’ not to notice. Newspapers and magazines which should have been holding Theresa May and Boris Johnson to account did nothing of the sort. Suppositions were reported, day after day, as proven fact.
The last four weeks have shown how nothing really changed even after the catastrophe of Iraq. The same pro-war commentators are still in place, robotically churning out their rabidly anti-Russian, anti-Putin diatribes for an ever-dwindling readership.
After the lies told about Iraqi WMDs, you might have thought there would be a bit of ‘mainstream’ skepticism about UK government chemical weapons claims against an ‘Official Enemy’ state, which seem designed to lead us into an even more calamitous war. But no, they all carried on as if the only important thing that had happened in 2003 was Arsenal beating Southampton 1-0 in the FA Cup Final.
Just before the Iraq invasion, I remember asking a Conservative MP at a party if he really believed the guff about Saddam having WMDs. He looked at me and paused, before saying, “Well you’ve got to admit, he’s not a frightfully nice chap.” Today that MP, who clearly didn’t believe the government’s assertions, is the British Foreign Secretary.
Boris Johnson has gone further than any minister down the ‘Russia did it’ line. In an interview with Deutsche Welle on March 20, he said: “they (the scientists at Porton Down) were absolutely categorical and I asked the guy myself, I said, ‘Are you sure?’ And he said there’s no doubt.”
That is flatly contradicted by the statement today of Gary Aitkenhead, the chief executive of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, who said, “We have not identified the precise source.”
Just as interesting was Aitkenhead’s response to being asked if Novichok could have emanated from Porton Down itself. “There’s no way that anything like that would ever have come from us… we’ve got the highest standards of control and security,” he said.
Yet in his Deutsche Welle interview, Boris Johnson, in answer to the question: “Does Britain possess samples of it?” (i.e. Novichok), replied, “They (Porton Down) do.” How could Porton Down know the substance used was Novichok if they possessed no samples to test it against?
If samples were stored literally just down the road from where the Skripals were poisoned, surely it’s reasonable to ask whether or not some of them did get out? To maintain, as the UK government does, that no other explanation other than Russian guilt is plausible is clearly nonsense. After going out on a limb on this one, (one suspects in order to curry favor with kingmaker Rupert Murdoch, Boris Johnson’s position as foreign secretary is surely now untenable. Jeremy Corbyn needs to be calling for his resignation – and also that of Prime Minister Theresa May – when he next goes to the House of Commons.
But it’s clear that the UK’s problems go a lot deeper than changing the faces at the top. The Salisbury ‘Rush to Blame Russia,’ before any evidence of Kremlin involvement was produced, proves that we need a clear out of the entire political and media establishment and a move to a more democratic, publicly accountable system. We didn’t get that after Iraq, but we really must get it now.
‘Ordinary chemists’ know about Novichok– chemical weapons expert refutes ‘state actor’ claim
RT | April 4, 2018
A chemical weapon expert slammed claims from the UK that a ‘state actor’ must be behind the Salisbury poisoning.
Porton Down – the UK’s secretive defense laboratory – said an assessment of the nerve agent used on former double agent Sergei Skripal and daughter Yulia showed it must have been state-backed due to its complexity.
However, the mystery of what happened on March 4 grows deeper as Downing Street’s rush to blame Russia unravels. Sanctions – the toughest in 30 years – were slapped on Moscow in the incident’s aftermath. Now, as the investigation widens, it appears there is now credible doubt, despite Theresa May’s and Boris Johnson’s insistence of Russian ‘culpability.’
Scientists from Porton Down were unable to confirm that the nerve agent, identified by the UK as A-234 – also known as Novichok – was Russian-made. In an interview with Sky News, Porton Down’s chief executive, Gary Aitkenhead, said the testing team thought a state actor was “probably” behind the poisoning.
Experts from around the world, including James Tour, a synthetic organic chemist at Rice University in Houston, Texas, have slammed the claim.
The chemical warfare expert said Russia is not the only state with the information to make the substance, backing up claims by ex-British ambassador Craig Murray, who cited his own sources when claiming that more than a dozen states could know how to make Novichok.
Tour told RT: “It would be natural to pin the blame on Russia in that Russia has indeed made these as part of their weapons stockpiles. We are talking about a development that probably took place more than 30 years ago, and with the fall of the Soviet Union, the word has gotten out to many states as to how to make these things.”
Tour also said ordinary chemists know about the deployment of chemical weapons.
He said: “Many states know about this to the point we are just chemists that talk together know about these types of things and I don’t work for a state system and I learned this just by talking with chemists from overseas – not Russian chemists either. There are chemists around the world that know this type of thing that have nothing to do with Russia.”
Moscow convenes an emergency meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, this week.
A British government spokesperson insisted that the Porton Down assessment was “only part of the intelligence picture, while Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Theresa May, among others, are accused of blaming Russia prematurely.
NATO Plotted ‘Skripal Case’ to Justify Their Defense Spendings – Moscow
Sputnik – April 3, 2018
The Russian Foreign Ministry says it can’t discern how to convene a NATO-Russia Council in the current climate, considering absurd NATO’s statements regarding a readiness for dialogue while expelling Russian diplomats.
“Yes, indeed, seven people have been declared undesirable. And they (in Brussels) have announced that they will not issue visas to three other employees,” Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Alexander Grushko stated at the Valdai Discussion Club’s event.
According to the diplomat, the next meeting of the Russia-NATO Council (NRC) cannot be convened under the conditions of Russian diplomats being expelled.
“NATO, expelling Russian diplomats, cuts the branch on which it sits. This contradicts the numerous statements made by the Secretary-General and other representatives of the alliance about NATO being interested in a political dialogue and the convening of a regular meeting of the NRC… How can it be convened under these conditions?” the Alexander Grushko said.
Moscow does not rule out that the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in the United Kingdom has been designed to justify the growing defense spending of NATO among other reasons, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko stated.
“I think that all this was planned, including due to the fact that it would be necessary to explain to the public in the near future where the money is going because it is colossal spending,” Grushko said when asked whether Moscow expected NATO to increase defense spending over the so-called Skripal case.
Euro-Atlantic solidarity around Skripal case has become a direct danger to European security, according to the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister.
Moscow does not exclude that the Skripal case was plotted as the argument for NATO’s increase in defense expenditures, a great enemy is needed, the deputy minister said.
“NATO has crossed the line when it continued to expand its defense presence at Russia’s borders. Today, the situation along our borders has changed dramatically and in fact, not only in terms of politics but also in the field of military development, NATO has resorted to Cold War schemes that should have remained in the past and today cannot provide security… without Russia,” the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation noted.
London decided to follow a provocative path to support an atmosphere of Russophobia, Grushko said.
“It is obvious that this is a provocation. The whole situation was turned upside down, an ideological campaign was built in such a way as to exclude a normal dialogue, professional, in fact, what happened. The UK refused to use legally binding instruments, which are fixed in the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Therefore, these are all signs that this is a provocation chosen at a special moment in order to further aggravate the relations between Russia and the West, worsen the prospects for a return to normalcy, and prevent the transition to cooperation schemes in the areas of common interest,” Alexander Grushko stated.
Western countries, making claims over Russia on the “Skripal case”, should have understood that it is impossible to speak with Moscow in the language of ultimatums, Grushko emphasized.
“An ultimatum was delivered, which was not intended to be answered because the people who formulated this ultimatum could not fail to understand beforehand that this is not the language in which one can speak,” he said.
Moscow will answer in an asymmetric way to any unfriendly NATO move in order to protect our interests, Grushko noted.
RT, Sputnik Facing Pressure in West Due to Effective Work
“By the way, why are they closing Sputnik and Russia Today? For one simple reason – because they [media outlets] carry out their function effectively, they really influence public opinion,” Grushko said.
Tensions between Russia and Western countries began to grow after the Salisbury incident, where Sergei Skripal, former Russian intelligence officer and his daughter Yulia were harmed by a nerve agent. The UK accused Russia of orchestrating the attack and expelled 23 Russian diplomats. The move has been supported by more than 25 countries, despite of the fact that Russia has repeatedly denied the accusations and cited the lack of proof.
The Warm War: Russiamania At The Boiling Point
By Jim Kavanagh | The Polemicist | March 31, 2018
Is it war yet?
Yes, in too many respects.
It’s a relentless economic, diplomatic, and ideological war, spiced with (so far) just a dash of military war, and the strong scent of more to come.
I mean war with Russia, of course, although Russia is the point target for a constellation of emerging adversaries the US is desperate to entame before any one or combination of them becomes too strong to defeat. These include countries like Iran and China, which are developing forces capable of resisting American military aggression against their own territory and on a regional level, and have shown quite too much uppitiness about staying in their previously-assigned geopolitical cages.
But Russia is the only country that has put its military forces in the way of a U.S. program of regime change—indirectly in Ukraine, where Russia would not get out of the way, and directly in Syria, where Russia actively got in the way. So Russia is the focus of attack, the prime target for an exemplary comeuppance.
Is it, then, a new Cold War, even more dangerous than the old one, as Stephen F. Cohen says?
That terminology was apt even a few months ago, but the speed, ferocity, and coordination of the West/NATO’s reaction to the alleged nerve-agent poisoning of the Skripals, as well as the formation of a War Cabinet in Washington, indicates to me that we’ve moved to another level of aggression.
It’s beyond Cold. Call it the Warm War. And the temperature’s rising.
The Nerve of Them
There are two underlying presumptions that, combined, make present situation more dangerous than a Cold War.
One is the presumption of guilt—or, more precisely, the presumption that the presumption of Russian guilt can always be made, and made to stick in the Western mind.
The confected furor over the alleged nerve-agent poisoning of the Skripals demonstrates this dramatically.
Theresa May’s immediate conclusion that the Russian government bears certain and sole responsibility for the nerve-agent poisoning of the Skripals is logically, scientifically, and forensically impossible.
False certainty is the ultimate fake news. It is just not true that, as she says: “There is no alternative conclusion other than the Russian state is culpable.” The falsity of this statement has been demonstrated by a slew of sources—including the developers of the alleged “Novichok” agent themselves, a thorough analysis by a former UN inspector in Iraq who worked on the destruction of Russian chemical weapons, establishment Western scientific outlets like New Scientist (“Other countries could have made ‘Russian’ nerve agent”), and the British government’s own mealy-mouthed, effective-but-unacknowledged disavowal of that conclusion. In its own words, The British government found: “a nerve agent or related compound,” “of a type developed by Russia.” So, it’s absolutely, positively, certainly, without a doubt, Russian-government-produced “Novichok”…. or something else.
Teresa May is lying, everyone who seconds her assertion of false certainty is lying, they all know they are lying, and the Russians know that they know they are lying. It’s a knowledgeable family.
Prince Geoffrey to his mother Eleanor in The Lion in Winter.
It boggles the—or at least, my—mind how, in the face of all this, anyone could take seriously her ultimatum, ignoring the procedures of the Chemical Weapons Convention, gave Russia 24 hours to “explain”—i.e., confess and beg forgiveness for—this alleged crime.
Indeed, it’s noteworthy that France initially, and rather sharply, refused to assume Russian guilt, with a government spokesman saying, “We don’t do fantasy politics. Once the elements are proven, then the time will come for decisions to be made.” But the whip was cracked—and surely not by the weak hand of Whitehall—demanding EU/NATO unity in the condemnation of Russia. So, in an extraordinary show of discipline that could only be ordered and orchestrated by the imperial center, France joined the United States and 20 other countries in the largest mass expulsion of Russian diplomats ever.
Western governments and their compliant media have mandated that Russian government guilt for the “first offensive use of a nerve agent” in Europe since World War II is to be taken as flat fact. Anyone—like Jeremy Corbyn or Craig Murray—who dares to interrupt the “Sentence first! Verdict afterwards!” chorus to ask for, uh, evidence, is treated to a storm of obloquy.
At this point, Western accusers don’t seem to care how blatantly unfounded, if not ludicrous, an accusation is. The presumption of Russian guilt, along with the shaming of anyone who questions it, has become an unquestionable standard of Western/American political and media discourse.
Old Cold War McCarthyism has become new Warm War fantasy politics.
Helled in Contempt
This declaration of diplomatic war over the Skripal incident is the culmination of an ongoing drumbeat of ideological warfare, demonizing Russia and Putin personally in the most predictable and inflammatory terms.
For the past couple of years, we’ve been told by Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Marco Rubio, and Boris Johnson that Putin is the new Hitler. That’s a particularly galling analogy for the Russians. Soviet Russia, after all, was Hitler’s main enemy, that defeated the Nazi army at the cost of 20+ million of its people—while the British Royal Family was not un-smitten with the charms of Hitlerian fascism, and British footballers had this poignant moment in 1938 Berlin:
“War” is what they seem to want it to be. For the past 18 to 24 months, we’ve also been inundated with Morgan Freeman and Rob Reiner’s ominous “We have been attacked. We are at war,” video, as well as the bipartisan (Hillary Clinton, John McCain) insistence that alleged Russian election meddling should be considered an “act of war” equivalent to Pearl Harbor. Indeed, Trump’s new National Security advisor, the warmongering lunatic John Bolton, calls it, explicitly “a casus belli, a true act of war.”
Even the military is getting in on the act. The nerve-agent accusation has been followed up by General John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, accusing Russia of arming the Taliban! It’s noteworthy that this senior American military general casually refers to Russia as “the enemy”: “We’ve had stories written by the Taliban that have appeared in the media about financial support provided by the enemy.”
Which is strange, because, since the Taliban emerged from the American-jihadi war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, and the Taliban and Russia have “enduring enmity” towards each other, as Kate Clark of the Afghanistan Analysts Network puts it. Furthermore, the sixteen-year-long American war against the Taliban has depended on Russia allowing the U.S. to move supplies through its territory, and being “the principal source of fuel for the alliance’s needs in Afghanistan.”
So the general has to admit that this alleged Russian “destabilising activity” is a new thing: “This activity really picked up in the last 18 to 24 months… When you look at the timing it roughly correlates to when things started to heat up in Syria. So it’s interesting to note the timing of the whole thing.”
Yes, it is.
The economic war against Russian is being waged through a series of sanctions that seem impossible to reverse, because their expressed goal is to extract confession, repentance, and restitution for crimes ascribed to Russia that Russia has not committed, or has not been proven to have committed, or are entirely fictional and have not been committed by anyone at all. We will only stop taking your bank accounts and consulates and let you play games with us if you confess and repent every crime we accuse you of. No questions permitted.
This is not a serious framework for respectful international relations between two sovereign nations. It’s downright childish. It paints everyone, including the party trying to impose it, into an impossible corner. Is Russia ever going to abandon Crimea, confess that it shot down the Malaysian jet, tricked us into electing Donald Trump, murdered the Skripals, is secretly arming the Taliban, et. al.? Is the U.S. ever going to say: “Never mind”? What’s the next step? It’s the predicament of the bully.
This is not, either, an approach that really seeks to address any of the “crimes” charged. As Victoria Nuland (a Clintonite John Bolton) put it on NPR, it’s about, “sending a message” to Russia. Well, as Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov said, with this latest mass expulsion of diplomats, the United States is, “Destroying what little remained of US-Russian ties.” He got the message.
All of this looks like a coordinated campaign that began in response to Russia’s interruption of American regime-change projects in Ukraine and especially Syria, that was harmonized—over the last 18 to 24 months—with various elite and popular motifs of discontent over the 2016 election, and that has reached a crescendo in the last few weeks with ubiquitous and unconstrained “enemization”1 of Russia. It’s hard to describe it as anything other than war propaganda—manufacturing the citizenry’s consent for a military confrontation.
Destroying the possibility of normal, non-conflictual, state-to-state relations and constituting Russia as “the enemy” is exactly what this campaign is about. That is its “message” and its effect—for the American people as much as for the Russia government. The heightened danger, I think, is that Russia, which has for a long time been reluctant to accept that America wasn’t interested in “partnership”, has now heard and understood this message, while the American people have only heard but do not understand it.
It’s hard to see where this can go that doesn’t involve military conflict. This is especially the case with the appointments of Mike Pompeo, Gina Haspel, and John Bolton—a veritable murderers’ row that many see as the core of a Trump War Cabinet. Bolton, who does not need Senate confirmation, is a particularly dangerous fanatic, who tried to get the Israelis to attack Iran before even they wanted to, and has promised regime change in Iran by 2019. As mentioned, he considers that Russia has already given him a “casus belli.” Even the staid New York Times warns that, with these appointments, “the odds of taking military action will rise dramatically.”
The second presumption in the American mindset today makes military confrontation more likely than it was during the Cold War: Not only is there a presumption of guilt, there is a presumption of weakness. The presumption of guilt is something the American imperial managers are confident they can induce and maintain in the Western world; the presumption of weakness is one they—or, I fear, too many of them—have all-too blithely internalized.
This is an aspect of the American self-image among policymakers whose careers matured in a post-Soviet world. During the Cold War, Americans held themselves in check by the assumption, that, militarily, the Soviet Union was a peer adversary, a country that could and would defend certain territories and interests against direct American military aggression—“spheres of interest” that should not be attacked. The fundamental antagonism was managed with grudging mutual respect.
There was, after all, a shared recent history of alliance against fascism. And there was an awareness that the Soviet Union, in however distorted a way, both represented the possibility of a post-capitalist future and supported post-colonial national liberation movements, which gave it considerable stature in the world.
American leadership might have hated the Soviet Union, but it was not contemptuous of it. No American leader would have called the Soviet Union, as John McCain called Russia, just “a gas station masquerading as a country.” And no senior American or British leader would have told the Soviet Union what British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson told Russia last week: to “go away and shut up.”
This is a discourse that assumes its own righteousness, authority, and superior power, even as it betrays its own weakness. It’s the discourse of a frustrated child. Or bully. Russia isn’t shutting up and going away, and the British are not—and know they’re not—going to make it. But they may think the Big Daddy backing them up can and will. And daddy may think so himself.
Like all bullies, the people enmeshed in this arrogant discourse don’t seem to understand that it is not frightening Russia. It’s only insulting the country, and leading it to conclude that there is indeed nothing remaining of productive, non-conflictual, US-Russian “partnership” ties. The post-Skripal worldwide diplomatic expulsions, which seem deliberately and desperately excessive, may have finally convinced Russia that there is no longer any use trying. Those who should be frightened of this are the American people.
The enemy of my enemy is me.
The United States is only succeeding in turning itself into an enemy for Russians. Americans would do well to understand how thoroughly their hypocritical and contemptuous stance has alienated the Russian people and strengthened Vladimir Putin’s leadership—as many of Putin’s critics warned them it would. The fantasy of stoking a “liberal” movement in Russia that will install some nouveau-Yeltsin-ish figure is dissipated in the cold light of a 77% election day. Putin is widely and firmly supported in Russia because he represents the resistance to any such scheme.
Americans who want to understand that dynamic, and what America itself has wrought in Russia, should heed the passion, anger, and disappointment in this statement about Putin’s election from a self-described “liberal” (using the word, I think, in the intellectual tradition, not the American political, sense), Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT TV (translator’s errors corrected):
Essentially, the West should be horrified not because 76% of Russians voted for Putin, but because this elections has demonstrated that 95% of Russia’s population supports conservative-patriotic, communist and nationalist ideas. That means that liberal ideas are barely surviving among measly 5% of population.
And that’s your fault, my Western friends. It was you who pushed us into “Russians never surrender” mode…
[W]ith all your injustice and cruelty, inquisitorial hypocrisy and lies, you forced us to stop respecting you. You and your so called “values.”
We don’t want to live like you live, anymore. For fifty years, secretly and openly, we wanted to live like you, but not any longer.
We have no more respect for you, and for those amongst us that you support, and for all those people who support you. …
For that you only have yourself to blame. … In meantime, you’ve pushed us to rally around your enemy. Immediately after you declared him an enemy, we united around him….
It was you who imposed an opposition between patriotism and liberalism. Although, they shouldn’t be mutually exclusive notions. This false dilemma, created by you, made us chose patriotism.
Even though, many of us are really liberals, myself included.
Get cleaned up, now. You don’t have much time left.
In fact, the whole “uprising”/color revolution strategy throughout the world is over. It’s been fatally discredited by its own purported successes. Everybody in the Middle East has seen how that worked out for Iraq, Libya, and Syria, and the Russians have seen how it worked out for Ukraine and for Russia itself. In neither Russia nor Iran (nor anywhere else of importance) are the Americans, with their sanctions and their NGOs and their cookies, going to stoke a popular uprising that turns a country into a fractured client of the Washington Consensus. More fantasy politics.
The old new world Washington wants won’t be born without a military midwife. The U.S. wants a compliant Russia (and “international community”) back, and it thinks it can force it into being.
Fear Knot
Consider this quote from The Saker, a defense analyst who was born in Switzerland to a Russian military family, “studied Russian and Soviet military affairs all [his] life,” and lived for 20 years in the United States. He’s been one of the sharpest analysts of Russia and Syria over the last few years. This was his take a year ago, after Trump’s cruise missile attack on Syria’s Al Shayrat airfield—another instant punishment for an absolutely, positively, proven-in-a day, chemical crime:
For one thing, there is no US policy on anything. The Russians expressed their total disgust and outrage at this attack and openly began saying that the Americans were “недоговороспособны”. What that word means is literally “not-agreement-capable” or unable to make and then abide by an agreement. While polite, this expression is also extremely strong as it implies not so much a deliberate deception as the lack of the very ability to make a deal and abide by it. … But to say that a nuclear world superpower is “not-agreement-capable” is a terrible and extreme diagnostic.
This means that the Russians have basically given up on the notion of having an adult, sober and mentally sane partner to have a dialog with…
In all my years of training and work as a military analyst I have always had to assume that everybody involved was what we called a “rational actor”. The Soviets sure were. As were the Americans.…
Not only do I find the Trump administration “not agreement-capable”, I find it completely detached from reality. Delusional in other words. …
Alas, just like Obama before him, Trump seems to think that he can win a game of nuclear chicken against Russia. But he can’t. Let me be clear here: if pushed into a corner the Russian will fight, even if that means nuclear war.
There is a reason for this American delusion. The present generation of American leadership was spoiled and addled by the blissful post-Soviet decades of American impunity.
The problem is not exactly that the U.S. wants full-on war with Russia, it’s that America does not fear it.2
Why should it? It hasn’t had to for twenty years during which the US assumed it could bully Russia to stay out of its imperial way anywhere it wanted to intervene.
After the Soviet Union broke up (and only because the Soviet Union disappeared) the United States was free to use its military power with impunity. For some time, the U.S. had its drunken stooge, Yeltsin, running Russia and keeping it out of America’s military way. There was nary a peep when Bill Clinton effectively conferred on NATO (meaning the U.S. itself) the authority to decide what military interventions were necessary and legitimate. For about twenty years—from the Yugoslavia through the Libya intervention—no nation had the military power or politico-diplomatic will to resist this.
But that situation has changed. Even the Pentagon recognizes that the American Empire is in a “post-primacy” phase—certainly “fraying,” and maybe even “collapsing.” The world has seen America’s social and economic strength dissipate, and its pretense of legitimacy disappear entirely. The world has seen American military overreach everywhere while winning nothing of stable value anywhere. Sixteen years, and the mighty U.S. Army cannot defeat the Taliban. Now, that’s Russia’s fault!
Meanwhile, a number of countries in key areas have gained the military confidence and political will to refuse the presumptions of American arrogance—China in the Pacific, Iran in the Middle East, and Russia in Europe and, surprisingly, the Middle East as well. In a familiar pattern, America’s resultant anxiety about waning power increases its compensatory aggression. And, as mentioned, since it was Russia that most effectively demonstrated that new military confidence, it’s Russia that has to be dealt with first.
The incessant wave of sanctions and expulsions is the bully in the schoolyard clenching his fist to scare the new kid away. OK, everyone’s got the message now. Unclench or punch?
Let’s be clear about who is the world’s bully. As is evident to any half-conscious person, Russia is not going to attack the United States or Europe. Russia doesn’t have scores of military bases, combat ships and aircraft up on America’s borders. It doesn’t have almost a thousand military bases around the world. Russia does not have the military forces to rampage around the world as America does, and it doesn’t want or need to. That’s not because of Russia’s or Vladimir Putin’s pacifism, but because Russia, as presently situated in the political economy of the world, has nothing to gain from it.
Nor does Russia need some huge troll-farm offensive to “destabilize” and sow division in Western Europe and the United States. Inequality, austerity, waves of immigrants from regime-change wars, and trigger-happy cops are doing a fine job of that. Russia isn’t responsible for American problems with Black Lives Matter or with the Taliban.
All of this is fantasy politics.
It’s the United States, with its fraying empire, that has a problem requiring military aggression. What other tools does the U.S. have left to put the upstarts, Russia first, back in their places?
It must be hard for folks who have had their way with country after country for twenty years not to think they can push Russia out of the way with some really, really scary threats, or maybe one or two “bloody nose” punches. Some finite number of discrete little escalations. There’s already been some shoving—that cruise missile attack, Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet, American attacks on Russian personnel (ostensibly private mercenaries) in Syria—and, look, Ma, no big war. But sometimes you learn the hard way the truth of the reverse Mike Tyson rule: “Everyone has a game plan until they smack the other guy in the face.”
Consider one concrete risk of escalation that every informed observer is, and every American should be, aware of.
The place where the United States and Russia are literally, geographically, closest to confrontation is Syria. As mentioned, the U.S. and its NATO ally, Turkey, have already attacked and killed Russians in Syria, and the U.S. and its NATO allies have a far larger military force than Russia in Syria and the surrounding area. On the other hand, Russia has made very effective use of its forces, including what Reuters calls “advanced cruise missiles” launched from planes, ships, and submarines that hit ISIS targets with high precision from 1000 kilometers.
Russia is also operating in accordance with international law, while the U.S. is not. Russia is fighting with Syria for the defeat of jihadi forces and the unification of the Syrian state. The United States is fighting with its jihadi clients for the overthrow of the Syrian government and the division of the country. Russia intervened in Syria after Obama announced that the U.S. would attack Syrian army troops, effectively declaring war. If neither side accepts defeat and goes home, it is quite possible there will be some direct confrontation over this. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that there won’t.
A couple of weeks ago Syria and Russia said the U.S. was planning a major offensive against the Syrian government, including bombing the government quarter in Damascus. Valery Gerasimov, head of Russia’s General Staff, warned: “In the event of a threat to the lives of our servicemen, Russia’s armed forces will take retaliatory measures against the missiles and launchers used.” In this context, “launchers” means American ships in the Mediterranean.
Also a couple of weeks ago, Russia announced a number of new, highly-advanced weapons systems. There’s discussion about whether some of the yet-to-be-deployed weapons announced may or may not be a bluff, but one that has already been deployed, called Dagger (Kinzhal, not the missiles mentioned above), is an air-launched hypersonic cruise missile that files at 5-7,000 miles per hour, with a range of 1,200 miles. Analyst Andrei Martyanov claims that: “no modern or prospective air-defense system deployed today by any NATO fleet can intercept even a single missile with such characteristics. A salvo of 5-6 such missiles guarantees the destruction of any Carrier Battle Group or any other surface group, for that matter.” Air-launched. From anywhere.
The U.S. attack has not (yet) happened, for whatever reason (Sputnik reporter Suliman Mulhem, citing “a military monitor,” claims that’s because of the Russian warnings). Great. But given the current state of America’s anxiously aggressive “post-primacy” policy—including the Russiamania, the Zionist-driven need to destroy Syria and Iran, and the War Cabinet—how unlikely is that the U.S. will, in the near future, make some such attack on some such target that Russia considers crucial to defend?
And Syria is just one theater where, unless one side accepts defeat and goes home, military conflict with Russia is highly likely. Is Russia going to abandon the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass if they’re attacked by fascist Kiev forces backed by the U.S.? Is it going to sit back and watch passively if American and Israeli forces attack Iran? Which one is going to give up and accept a loss: John Bolton or Vladimir Putin?
Which brings us to the pointed question: What will the U.S. do if Russia sinks an American ship? How many steps before that goes full-scale, even nuclear? Or maybe American planners (and you, dear reader) are absolutely, positively sure that will never happen, because the U.S. has cool weapons, too, and a lot more of them, and the Russians will probably lose all their ships in the Mediterranean immediately, if not something worse, and they’ll put up with anything rather than go one more step. The Russians, like everybody, must know the Americans always win.
Happy with that, are we? Snug in our homeland rug? ‘Cause Russians won’t fight, but the Taliban will.
This is exactly what is meant by Americans not fearing war with Russia (or war in general for that matter). Nothing but contempt.
The Skripal opera, directed by the United States, with the whole of Europe and the entire Western media apparatus singing in harmony, makes it clear that the American producers have no speaking role for Russia in their staging of the world. And that contempt makes war much more likely. Here’s The Saker again, on how dangerous the isolation the U.S. and its European clients are so carelessly imposing on Russia and themselves is for everybody:
Right now they are expelling Russian diplomats en masse and they are feeling very strong and manly. …
The truth is that this is only the tip of a much bigger iceberg. In reality, crucial expert-level consultations, which are so vitally important between nuclear superpowers, have all but stopped a long time ago. We are down to top level telephone calls. That kind of stuff happens when two sides are about to go to war. For many months now Russia and NATO have made preparations for war in Europe. …Very rapidly the real action will be left to the USA and Russia. Thus any conflict will go nuclear very fast. And, for the first time in history, the USA will be hit very, very hard, not only in Europe, the Middle-East or Asia, but also on the continental US.
Mass diplomatic expulsions, economic warfare, lockstep propaganda, no interest whatsoever in respectfully addressing or hearing from the other side. What we’ve been seeing over the past few months is the “kind of stuff that happens when two sides are about to go to war.”
The less Americans fear war, the less they respect the possibility of it, the more likely they are to get it.
Ready or Not
The Saker makes a diptych of a point that gets to the heart of the matter. We’d do well to read and think on it carefully:
1. The Russians are afraid of war. The Americans are not.
2. The Russians are ready for war.
The Americans are not. Russia is afraid of war. More than twenty million Soviet citizens were killed in WWII, about half of them civilians. That was more than twenty times the number of Americans and British casualties combined. The entire country was devastated. Millions died in the 872-day siege of Leningrad alone, including Vladimir Putin’s brother. The city’s population was decimated by disease and starvation, with some reduced to cannibalism. Wikileaks calls it “one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history [and] possibly the costliest in casualties.” Another million-plus died in the nine-month siege of Stalingrad.
Every Russian knows this history. Millions of Russian families have suffered from it. Of course, there was mythification of the struggle and its heroes, but the Russians, viscerally, know war and know it can happen to them. They do not want to go through it again. They will do almost anything to avoid it. Russians are not flippant about war. They fear it. They respect it.
The Americans are not (afraid of war). Americans have never experienced anything remotely as devastating as this. About 620,000 Americans died in the Civil War, 150 years ago. (And we’re still entangled in that!) The American mainland has not been attacked by a significant military force since the War of 1812. Since then, the worst attacks on American territory are two one-off incidents (Pearl Harbor and 9/11), separated by seventy years, totaling about six-thousand casualties. These are the iconic moments of America Under Siege.
For the American populace, wars are “over there,” fought by a small group of Americans who go away and either come back or don’t. The death, destruction, and aroma of warfare—which the United States visits on people around the world incessantly—is unseen and unexperienced at home. Americans do not, cannot, believe, in any but the most abstract intellectual sense, that war can happen here, to them. For the general populace, talk of war is just more political background noise, Morgan Freeman competing for attention with Stormy Daniels and the Kardashians.
Americans are supremely insouciant about war: They threaten countries with it incessantly, the government routinely sells it with lies, and the political parties promote it opportunistically to defeat their opponents—and nobody cares. For Americans, war is part of a game. They do not fear it. They do not respect it.
The Russians are ready for war. The Nazi onslaught was defeated—in Soviet Russia, by Soviet Citizens and the Red Army—because the mass of people stood and fought together for a victory they understood was important. They could not have withstood horrific sieges and defeated the Nazis any other way. Russians understand, in other words, that war is a crisis of death and destruction visited on the whole of society, which can only be won by a massive and difficult effort grounded in social solidarity. If the Russians feel they have to fight, if they feel besieged, they know they will have to stand together, take the hits that come, and fight to the finish. They will not again permit war to be brought to their cities while their attacker stays snug. There will be a world of hurt. They will develop and use any weapon they can. And their toughest weapon is not a hypersonic missile; it’s that solidarity, implied by that 77%. (Did you read that Simonyan statement?) They may not be seeking it, but, insofar as anybody can be, they are ready to fight.
Americans are not (ready for war) : Americans have experienced the horror of what was as a series of discrete tragedies visited upon families of fallen soldiers, reported in human-interest vignettes at the end of the nightly news. Individual tragedies, not a social disaster.
It’s hard to imagine the social devastation of war in any case, but American culture wants no part of thinking about that concretely. The social imagination of war is deflected into fantastic scenarios of a super-hero universe or a zombie apocalypse. The alien death-ray may blow up the Empire State Building, but the hero and his family (now including his or her gender-ambivalent teenager, and, of course, the dog) will survive and triumph. Cartoon villains, cartoon heroes, and a cartoon society.
One reason for this, we have to recognize, is the victory of the Thatcherite/libertarian-capitalist “no such thing as society” ideology. Congratulations, Ayn Rand, there is no such thing as American society now. It’s every incipient entrepreneur for him or herself. This does not a comradely, fighting band of brothers and sisters make.
Furthermore, though America is constantly at war, nobody understands the purpose of it. That’s because the real purpose can never be explained, and must be hidden behind some facile abstraction—”democracy,” “our freedoms,” etc. This kind of discourse can get some of the people motivated for some of the time, but it loses its charm the minute someone gets smacked in the face.
Once they take a moment, everybody can see that there is nobody with an army threatening to attack and destroy the United States, and if they take a few moments, everybody can see how phony the “democracy and freedom” stuff is and remember how often they’ve been lied to before. There’s just too much information out there. (Which is why the Imperial High Command wants to control the internet.) Why the hell am I fighting? What in hell are we fighting for? These are questions everybody will ask after, and too many people are now asking before, they get smacked in the face.
This lack of social understanding and lack of political support translates into the impossibility of fighting a major, sustained war that requires taking heavy casualties—even “over there,” but certainly in the snug. American culture might be all gung-ho about Seal Team Six kicking ass, but the minute American homes start blowing up and American bodies start falling, Hoo-hah becomes Uh-oh, and it’s going to be Outta here.
Americans are ready for Hoo-hah and the Shark Tank and the Zombie Apocalypse. They are not ready for war.
You Get What You Play For
“Russiagate,” which started quite banally in the presidential campaign as a Democratic arrow to take down Trump, is now Russiamania—a battery of weapons wielded by various sectors of the state, aimed at an array of targets deemed even potentially resistant to imperial militarism. Trump himself—still, and for as long as he’s deemed unreliable—is targeted by a legal prosecution of infinite reach (whose likeliest threat is to take him down for something that has nothing to do with Russia). Russia itself is now targeted in full force by economic, diplomatic, ideological—and, tentatively, military—weapons of the state. Perhaps most importantly, American and European people, especially dissidents, are targeted by a unified media barrage that attacks any expression of radical critique, anything that “sows division”—from Black Lives Matter, to the Sanders campaign, to “But other countries could have made it”—as Russian treachery.
The stunning success of that last offensive is crucial to making a war more likely, and must be fought. To increase the risk of war with a nuclear power in order to score points against Donald Trump or Jill Stein—well, only those who neither respect, fear, nor are ready for war would do such a stupid and dangerous thing.
It’s impossible to predict with certainty whether, when, or with whom a major hot war will be started. The same chaotic disarray and impulsiveness of the Trump administration that increases the danger of war might also work to prevent it. John Bolton may be fired before he trims his moustache. But it’s a pressure-cooker, and the temperature has spiked drastically.
In a previous essay, I said that Venezuela was a likely first target for military attack, precisely because it would make for an easy victory that didn’t risk military confrontation with Russia. That’s still a good possibility. As we saw with Iraq Wars 1 (which helped to end the “Vietnam Syndrome”) and 2 (which somewhat resurrected it), the imperial high command needs to inure the American public with a virtually American-casualty-free victory and in order to lure them into taking on a war that’s going to hurt.
But the new War Cabinet may be pumped for the main event—an attack on Iran. Trump, Pompeo, and Bolton are all rabid proponents of regime-change in Iran. We can be certain that the Iran nuclear deal will be scrapped, and everyone will work hard to implement the secret agreement the Trump administration already has with Israel to “to deal with Iran’s nuclear drive, its missile programs and its other threatening activities”—or, as Trump himself expresses it: “cripple the [Iranian] regime and bring it to collapse.” (That agreement, by the way, was negotiated and signed by the previous, supposedly not-so-belligerent National Security Advisor, H. R. McMaster.)
Still, as I also said in the previous essay, an attack on Iran means the Americans must either make sure Russia doesn’t get in the way or make clear that they don’t care if it does. So, threatening moves—not excluding probing military moves—against Russia will increase, whether Russia is the preferred direct target or not.
The siege is on.
Americans who want to continue playing with this fire would do well to pay some respectful attention to the target whose face they want to smack. Russia did not boast or brag or threaten or Hoo-Hah about sending military forces to Syria. When it was deemed necessary—when the United States declared its intention to attack the Syrian Army—it just did it. And American 10-dimensional-chess players have been squirming around trying to deal with the implications of that ever since. They’re working hard on finding the right mix of threats, bluffs, sanctions, expulsions, “Shut up and go away!” insults, military forces on the border, and “bloody nose” attacks to force a capitulation. They should be listening to their target, who has not tired of asking for a “partnership,” who has clearly stated what his country would do in reaction to previous moves (e.g., the abrogation of the ABM Treaty and stationing of ABM bases in Eastern Europe), whose country and family have suffered from wartime devastation Americans cannot imagine, who therefore respects, fears, and is ready for war in ways Americans are not, and who is not playing their game:
1 Ironically, given current drivers of Russiamania, this is a reference to remarks by Janet Napolitano. “The Enemization of Everything or an American Story of Empathy & Healing?”
2 Though it’s ridiculous that it needs to be said: I’m not talking here about the phony fear engendered by the media presentation of the “strongman,” “brutal dictator” Vladimir Putin. This is part and parcel of comic-book politics—conjuring a super-villain, who, we all know, is destined to be defeated.
Russia ‘Novichok’ Hysteria Proves Politicians and Media Haven’t Learned The Lessons of Iraq
By Patrick Henningsen | 21st Century Wire | March 31, 2018
If there’s one thing to be gleaned from the current atmosphere of anti Russian hysteria in the West, it’s that the US-led sustained propaganda campaign is starting to pay dividends. It’s not only the hopeless political classes and media miscreants who believe that Russia is hacking, meddling and poisoning our progressive democratic utopia – so many have pinned their political careers to this by now that’s it’s too late to turn back. As it was with Iraq in 2003, these dubious public figures require a degree of public support for their policies, and unfortunately many people do believe in the grand Russian conspiracy, having been sufficiently brow-beaten into submission by around-the-clock fear mongering and official fake news disseminated by government and the mainstream media.
What makes this latest carnival of warmongering more frightening is that it proves that the political and media classes never actually learned or internalized the basic lessons of Iraq, namely that the cessation of diplomacy and the declarations of sanctions (a prelude to war) against another sovereign state should not be based on half-baked intelligence and mainstream fake news. But that’s exactly what is happening with this latest Russian ‘Novichok’ plot.
Admittedly, the stakes are much higher this time around. The worst case scenario is unthinkable, whereby the bad graces of men like John Bolton and other military zealots, there may just be a thin enough mandate to short-sell another military conflagration or proxy war – this time against another nuclear power and UN Security Council member.
Enter stage right, where US President Donald Trump announced this week that the US is moving closer to war footing with Russia. It’s not the first time Trump has made such a hasty move in the absence any forensic evidence of a crime. Nowadays, hearsay, conjecture and social media postings are enough to declare war. Remember last April with the alleged “Sarin Attack” in Khan Sheikhoun, when the embattled President squeezed off 59 Tomahawk Cruise missiles against Syria – a decision, which as far as anyone can tell, was based solely on a few YouTube videos uploaded by the illustrious White Helmets. Back then Trump learned how an act of war against an existential enemy could take the heat off at home and translate into a bounce in the polls. Even La Résistance at CNN were giddy with excitement and threw their support behind Trump, with some pundits describing his decision to act as “Presidential.”
As with past high-profile western-led WMD allegations against governments in Syria and Iraq (the US and UK are patently unconcerned with multiple allegations of ‘rebel’ terrorists in Syria caught using chemical weapons), an identical progression of events appears to be unfolding following the alleged ‘Novichok’ chemical weapon poisoning of retired British-Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, Wiltshire on March 4th.
Despite a lack of evidence presented to the public other than the surreptitious “highly likely” assessments of British Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, President Trump once again has caved in to pressure from Official Washington’s anti-Russian party line and ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats – which he accused of being spies. Trump also ordered the closure of the Russian Consulate in Seattle, citing speculative fears that Russia might be spying on a nearby Boeing submarine development base. It was the second round of US expulsions of Russian officials, with the first one ordered by the outgoing President Obama in December 2016, kicking out 35 Russian diplomats and their families (including their head chef) and closing the Russian Consulate in San Francisco, with some calling it “a den of spies”.
Trump’s move followed an earlier UK action on March 14th, which expelled 23 Russian diplomats also accused of being spies. This was in retaliation for the alleged poisoning of a retired former Russian-British double agent in Salisbury, England.
This was my initial reaction back on March 14, 2018, during a live TV segment:
The ‘Collective’ Concern
It’s important to understand how this week’s brash move by Washington was coordinated in advance. The US and the UK are relying on their other NATO partners, including Germany, Poland, Italy, Canada, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Estonia and Lithuania – to create the image of a united front against perceived ‘Russian aggression’. As with multilateral military operations, multilateral diplomatic measures like this are not carried out on a whim.
Aside from this, there are two seriously worrying aspects of this latest US-led multilateral move against Russia. Firstly, this diplomatic offensive against Russia mirrors a NATO collective defense action, and by doing so, it tacitly signals towards an invocation of Article 5. According to AP, one German spokesperson called it a matter of ‘solidarity’ with the UK. Statements from the White House are no less encouraging:
“The United States takes this action in conjunction with our NATO allies, and partners around the world in response with Russia’s use of a military grade chemical weapon on the soil of the United Kingdom — the latest in its ongoing pattern of destabilizing activities around the world,” the White House said.
“Today’s actions make the United States safer by reducing Russia’s ability to spy on Americans, and to conduct covert operations that threaten America’s national security.”
What this statement indicates is that any Russian foreign official or overseas worker in the West should be regarded as possible agents of espionage. In other words, the Cold War is now officially back on.
Then came this statement: “With these steps, the United States and our allies and partners make clear to Russia that its actions have consequences.”
In an era of power politics, this language is anything but harmless. And while US and UK politicians and media pundits seem to be treating it all as a school yard game at times, we should all be reminded that his is how wars start.
BIRDS OF A FEATHER: Never in modern history has mediocrity in politics been celebrated as a virtue by so many.
The second issue with the Trump’s diplomatic move against Russia is that it extends beyond the territorial US – and into what should be regarded at the neutral zone of the United Nations. As part of the group of 60 expulsions, the US has expelled 12 Russian diplomats from the United Nations in New York City. While this may mean nothing to jumped-up political appointees like Nikki Haley who routinely threaten the UN when a UNGA vote doesn’t go her way, this is an extremely dangerous precedent because it means that the US has now created a diplomatic trap door where legitimate international relations duties are being carelessly rebranded as espionage – done on a whim and based on no actual evidence. By using this tactic, the US is casting aside decades of international resolutions, treaties and laws. Such a move directly threatens to undermine a fundamental principle of the United Nations which is its diplomatic mission and the right for every sovereign nation to have diplomatic representation. Without it, there is no UN forum and countries cannot talk through their differences and negotiate peaceful settlements. This is why the UN was founded in the first place. Someone might want to remind Nikki Haley of that.
On top of this, flippant US and UK officials are already crowing that Russia should be kicked off the UN Security Council. In effect, Washington is trying to cut the legs out from a fellow UN Security Council member and a nuclear power. This UNSC exclusion campaign been gradually building up since 2014, where US officials have been repeatedly blocked by Russia over incidents in Syria and the Ukraine. Hence, Washington and its partners are frustrated with the UN framework, and that’s probably why they are so actively undermining it.
Those boisterous calls, as irrational and ill-informed as they might be, should be taken seriously because as history shows, these signs are a prelude to war.
Also, consider the fact that both the US and Russian have military assets deployed in Syria. How much of the Skripal case and the subsequent fall-out has to do with the fact that US Coalition and Gulf state proxy terrorists have lost their hold over key areas in Syria? The truly dangerous part of this equation is that the illegal military occupation by the US and its NATO ally Turkey of northeastern Syria is in open violation of international law, and so Washington and its media arms would like nothing more than to be history’s actor and bury its past indiscretions under a new layer of US-Russia tension in the Middle East.
Another WMD Debacle?
Is it really possible to push East-West relations over the edge on the basis of anecdotal evidence?
Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, highlighted the recent British High Court judgement which states in writing that the government’s own chemical weapons experts from the Porton Down research facility could not categorically confirm that a Russian ‘Novichok’ nerve agent was actually used in the Salisbury incident. Based on this, Murray believes that both British Prime Minster Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, and Britain’s deputy UN representative Jonathan Allen – have all lied to the public and the world when making their public statements that the Russians had in fact launched a deadly chemical weapons attack on UK soil. Murray elaborates on this key point:
“This sworn Court evidence direct from Porton Down is utterly incompatible with what Boris Johnson has been saying. The truth is that Porton Down have not even positively identified this as a ‘Novichok’, as opposed to “a closely related agent”. Even if it were a ‘Novichok’ that would not prove manufacture in Russia, and a ‘closely related agent’ could be manufactured by literally scores of state and non-state actors.”
“This constitutes irrefutable evidence that the government have been straight out lying – to Parliament, to the EU, to NATO, to the United Nations, and above all to the people – about their degree of certainty of the origin of the attack. It might well be an attack originating in Russia, but there are indeed other possibilities and investigation is needed. As the government has sought to whip up jingoistic hysteria in advance of forthcoming local elections, the scale of the lie has daily increased.”
Murray has been roundly admonished by the UK establishment for his views, but he is still correct to ask the question: how could UK government leaders have known ‘who did it’ in advance of any criminal forensic investigation or substantive testing by Porton Down or an independent forensic investigation by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)?
One would hope we could all agree that it’s this sort of question which should have been given more prominence in the run-up to the Iraq War. In matters of justice and jurisprudence, that’s a fundamental question and yet, once again – it has been completely bypassed.
Murray is not alone. A number of scientists and journalists have openly questioned the UK’s hyperbolic claims that Russia had ordered a ‘chemical attack’ on British soil. In her recent report for the New Scientist, author Debora MacKenzie reiterates the fact that several countries could have manufactured a ‘Novichok’ class nerve agent and used it in the chemical attack on Russians Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury.
“British Prime Minister Theresa May says that because it was Russia that developed Novichok agents, it is ‘highly likely’ that Russia either attacked the Skripals itself, or lost control of its Novichok to someone else who did. But other countries legally created Novichok for testing purposes after its existence was revealed in 1992, and a production method has even been published.”
The New Scientist also quotes Ralf Trapp, a chemical weapons consultant formerly with the OPCW, who also reiterates a point worth reminding readers of – that inspectors are only able to tell where molecules sampled in Salisbury have come from if they have reference samples for the ingredients used.
“I doubt they have reference chemicals for forensic analysis related to Russian CW agents,” says Trapp. “But if Russia has nothing to hide they may let inspectors in.”
Even if they can identify it as Novichok, they cannot say that it came from Russia, or was ordered by the Russian government, not least of all because the deadly recipe is available on Amazon for only $28.45.
It should be noted that a substantial amount of evidence points to only two countries who are the most active in producing and testing biological and chemical weapons WMD – the United States and Great Britain. Their programs also include massive ‘live testing’ on both humans and animals with most of this work undertaken at the Porton Down research facility located only minutes away from the scene of this alleged ‘chemical attack’ in Salisbury, England.
Problems with the Official Story
If we put aside for the moment any official UK government theory, which is based on speculation backed-up by a series of hyperbolic statements and proclamations of Russian guilt, there are still many fundamental problems with the official story – maybe too many to list here, but I will address what I believe are a few key items of interest.
The UK police have now released a statement claiming that the alleged ‘Novichok’ nerve agent was somehow administered at the front door of Sergie Skripal’s home in Wiltshire. This latest official claim effectively negates the previous official story because it means that the Skripals would have been exposed a home at the latest around 13:00 GMT on March 4th, and then drove into town, parking their car at Sainsbury’s car park, then having a leisurely walk to have drinks at The Mill Pub, before for ordering and eating lunch at Zizzis restaurant, and then finally leaving the Zizzis and walking before finally retiring on a park bench – where emergency services were apparently called at 16:15 GMT to report an incident. Soon after, local Police arrived on the scene to find the Skripals on the bench in an “extremely serious condition”. Based on this story, the Skripals would have been going about their business for 3 hours before finally falling prey to the deadly WMD ‘Novichok’. From this, one would safely conclude that whatever has poisoned the pair was neither lethal nor could it have been a military grade WMD. Even by subtracting the home doorway exposure leg of this story, it hardly adds up – as even a minor amount of any real lethal military grade WMD would have effected many more people along this timeline of events. Based on what we know so far, it seems much more plausible that the pair would have been poisoned at Zizzis restaurant.
When this story initially broke, we were told that the attending police officer who first arrived on the scene of this incident, Wiltshire Police Detective Sgt. Nick Bailey – was “fighting for his life” after being exposed to the supposed ‘deadly Russian nerve agent’. As it turned out, officer Bailey was treated in hospital and then discharged on March 22, 2018. To our knowledge, no information or photos of Bailey’s time in care are available to the public.
The public were also told initially that approximately 4o people were taken into medical care because of “poison exposure”. This bogus claim was promulgated by mainstream media outlets, like Rupert Murdoch’s Times newspaper. In reality, no one showed signed of “chemical weapons” exposure, meaning that this story was just another example of mainstream corporate media fake news designed to stoke tension and fear in the public. We exposed this at the time on the UK Column News here:
@medialens @Ian56789 Look who’re the ACTUAL producers of #FakeNews on the #Skripal #RussianSpyPoisoning #MSM story… pic.twitter.com/ytKE0EVA6j
— Patrick Henningsen (@21WIRE) March 21, 2018
To further complicate matters, this week we were told that Yulia Skripal has now turned the corner and is in recovery, and is speaking to police from her hospital bed. If this is true, then it further proves that whatever the alleged poison agent was which the Skripals were exposed to – it was not a lethal, military grade nerve agent. If it had been, then most likely the Skripals and many others would not be alive right now.
Unfortunately, in the new age of state secrecy, we can expect that most of the key information relating to this case may be sealed indefinitely under a national security letter. In the case of Porton Down scientist David Kelly, the key information is sealed (hidden) for another 60+ years (which means we might get to see it in the year 2080). This means that we just have to take their word for it, or to borrow the words of the newly crowned UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson – any one asking questions, “should just go away and shut up.”
Such is the level of decorum and transparency in this uncomfortably Orwellian atmosphere.
While Britain insists that it has ‘irrefutable proof’ that Russia launched a deadly nerve-gas attack to murder the Skripals, the facts simply do not match-up with the rhetoric.
The Litvinenko Conspiracy Theory
It’s important to note that as far as public perceptions are concerned, the Skripal case has been built directly on top of the Litvinenko case.
In order to try and reinforce the speculation, the media have resurrected the trial-by-media case of another Russian defector, former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who is said to have died after being poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 in his tea at a Mayfair restaurant. Despite not having any actual evidence as to who committed the crime, the British authorities and the mainstream media have upheld an almost religious belief that Vladimir Putin had ordered the alleged poisoning of Litvinenko.
The media mythos was reinforced in 2016, when a British Public Inquiry headed by Sir Robert Owen accused senior Russian officials of ‘probably having motives to approve the murder’ of Litvinenko. Again, this level of guesswork and speculation would never meet the standard of an actual forensic investigation in a real criminal court, but as far as apportioning blame to another nation or head of state – it seems fair enough for British authorities. Following the completion of the inquiry, Sir Robert had this to say:
“Taking full account of all the evidence and analysis available to me, I find that the FSB operation to kill Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr Patrushev and also by President Putin.”
Owen’s inquiry was not definitive. Quite the opposite in fact, and in many ways it mirrors the Skripal case as it has been presented to the public. Despite offering no evidence of any criminal guilt, Owen’s star chamber maintained that President Vladimir Putin “probably” approved the operation to assassinate Litvinenko. Is “probably” really enough to assign guilt in a major international crime? When it comes to high crimes of state, the answer seems to be yes.
According to Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Marina Zakharova, that UK inquiry was “neither transparent nor public” and was “conducted mostly behind doors, with classified documents and unnamed witnesses contributing to the result…”
Zakharova highlighted the fact that two key witnesses in the case – Litvinenko’s chief patron, UK-based anti-Putin defector billionaire oligarch Boris Berezovsky, and the owner of Itsu restaurant in London’s Mayfair where the incident is said to have taken place – had both suddenly died under dubious circumstances. The British authorities went on to accuse two Russian men in the Litvineko murder, businessman Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun. Both have denied the accusations. Despite the lack of any real evidence, the United States Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control blacklisted both Lugovoi and Kovtun, as well as Russian persons Stanislav Gordievsky, Gennady Plaksin and Aleksandr I. Bastrykin – under the Magnitsky Act, which freezes their assets held in American financial institutions, and bans them from conducting any transactions or traveling to the United States. This is a familiar pattern: even if the case is inconclusive, or collapses due to a lack of evidence, the policies remain in place.
Despite all the pomp and circumstance however, the official conspiracy theory failed to sway even Litvinenko’s own close family members. While Litvinenko’s widow Marina maintains that it was definitely the Russian government who killed her husband, Alexsander’s younger brother Maksim Litvinenko, based in Rimini, Italy, believes the British report is “ridiculous” to blame the Kremlin for the murder of his brother, stating that he believes British security services had more of a motive to carry out the assassination.
“My father and I are sure that the Russian authorities are not involved. It’s all a set-up to put pressure on the Russian government,” said Litvinenko to the Mirror newspaper, and that such reasoning can explain why the UK waited almost 10 years to launch the inquiry into his brother’s death. Following the police investigation, Alexander’s father Walter Litvinenko, later said that he had regretted blaming Putin and the Russian government for his son’s death and did so under intense pressure at the time.
For anyone who is also reticent to accept the proclamations of the British state and the mainstream media on the Litvinenko case, it’s worth reading the work of British journalist Will Dunkerly here.
With so many questions hanging over the actual validity of the British state’s accusations against Russia, it’s somewhat puzzling that British police would say they are still ‘looking for similarities’ between the Skripal and Litvinenko cases in order to pinpoint a modus operandi.
The admission by the British law enforcement that their investigation may take months before any conclusion can be drawn also begs the question: how could May have been so certain so quick? The answer should be clear by now: she could not have known it was a ‘Novichok’ agent, any more than she could know that ‘Russia did it.’
A Plastic Cold War
Historically speaking, in the absence of any real mandate or moral authority, governments suffering from a chronic identity crisis and will often seek to define themselves not what they stand for, but what (or who) they are in opposition to. This profile suits both the US and UK perfectly at the moment. Both governments are limping along with barely a mandate, and have orchestrated two of the worst and most hypocritical debacles in history in Syria and Yemen. With their moral high-ground long gone, both countries require an existential enemy in order to give their missions legitimacy. The cheapest, easiest option is to reinvigorate a framework which was already there, and that’s the Cold War. Reds under the bed. The Russian are coming. It’s cheap and easy because it’s already been seeded with 70 years of Cold War propaganda and institutionalized racism in the West directed against Russians. If you don’t believe me, just go look at some of the posters, watch the TV propaganda in the US, or look at the horrific McCarthy witch hunts. I grew up being taught, “never again!” and that “welcome to the future: those days of irrational paranoia are behind us now.” That madness was mainstream and actively promoted by government and mainstream media.
You would have to be at the pinnacle of ignorance to deny that this is exactly what we are seeing today, albeit a more plastic version, but just as immoral and dangerous.
Dutifully fanning the flaming of war, Theresa May has issued her approval of the NATO members diplomatic retaliation this week exclaiming, “We welcome today’s actions by our allies, which clearly demonstrate that we all stand shoulder to shoulder in sending the strongest signal to Russia that it cannot continue to flout international law.”
But from an international law perspective, can May’s ‘highly likely’ assurances really be enough to position the west on war footing with Russia? When Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn asked these same fundamental questions on March 14th, he was shouted down by the Tory bench, and also by the hawkish Blairites sitting behind him.
Afterwards, the British mainstream press launched yet another defamation campaign against Corbyn with the UK’s Daily Mail calling the opposition leader a “Kremlin Stooge”, followed by British state broadcaster the BBC who went through the effort of creating a mock-up graphic of Corbyn in front of the Kremlin (pictured above) apparently wearing a Russian hat, as if to say he was a Russian agent. It was a new low point in UK politics and media.
When considering the mainstream media’s Corbyn smear alongside the recent insults hurled at Julian Assange by Tory MP Sir Alan Duncan who stood up in front of Parliament and called the Wikileaks founder a “miserable worm”, what this really says is that anyone who dares defy the official state narrative will be beaten down and publicly humiliated. In other words, dissent in the political ranks will not be tolerated. It’s almost as if we are approaching a one party state.
Would a UN Security Council member and nuclear power really be so brazen as to declare on another country guilty without presenting any actual evidence or completing a genuine forensic investigation?
So why the apparent rush to war? Haven’t we been here before, in 2003? Will the people of the West allow it to happen again?
As with Tony Blair’s WMD’s in 2003, the British public are meant to take it on faith and never question the official government line. And just like in 2003, the UK has opened the first door on the garden path, with the US and its ‘coalition’ following safely behind, shoulder to shoulder. In this latest version of the story, Tony Blair is being played by Theresa May, and Boris Johnson is playing Jack Straw. On the other side of the pond, a hapless Trump is the hapless Bush. Both Blair and Straw, along with the court propagandist Alastair Campbell – are all proven to have been liars of the highest order, and if there were any real accountability or justice, these men and their collaborators in government should be in prison right now. The fact they aren’t is why the door has been left wide open for the exact same scam to be repeated again, and again.
Iraq should have taught us all to be skeptical about official claims of chemical weapons evidence, and to face the ugly truth about how majors wars are waged by deception – by our own governments. What does it tell us about today’s society if people still cannot see this?
That’s why it was wrong to let Blair, Bush and others off the hook for war crimes. By doing so, both the British and Americans are inviting a dark phase of history to repeat itself again, and again.
It’s high time that we break the cycle.
***
Author Patrick Henningsen is a global affairs analyst and founder of independent news and analysis site 21st Century Wire, and host of the SUNDAY WIRE weekly radio show broadcast globally over the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR).
Russian diplomat expulsions signal crude side of Western intention
Global Times – 2018/3/27
On March 26, the US, Canada, and several European Union countries expelled Russian diplomats from their respective foreign embassies and consulates in retaliation against Russia’s alleged poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter. As of this writing, 19 countries, including 15 EU member states, have shown their support to Great Britain by enforcing such measures.
On March 4, Skripal and his daughter Yulia were rushed to a hospital after they were found unconscious at a park in Salisbury. It was later reported the father and daughter had come into contact with an obscure nerve agent. UK government officials said the Skripals were attacked by “Novichok,” a powerful Soviet-era chemical nerve agent used by the military.
The British government did not provide evidence that linked Russia to the crime but was confident from the beginning there could be no other “reasonable explanation” for the attempted assassination. Great Britain was so convinced of their Russia theory, they wasted no time taking the lead in levying sanctions against the country by quickly expelling Russian diplomats from London. Shortly afterwards, UK capital officials reached out to NATO and their European allies who provided immediate support.
The accusations that Western countries have hurled at Russia are based on ulterior motives, similar to how the Chinese use the expression “perhaps it’s true” to seize upon the desired opportunity. From a third-person perspective, the principles and diplomatic logic behind such drastic efforts are flawed, not to mention that expelling Russian diplomats almost simultaneously is a crude form of behavior. Such actions make little impact other than increasing hostility and hatred between Russia and their Western counterparts.
The UK government should have an independent investigation conducted into the Skripal poisoning by representatives from the international community. An effort such as this would provide results strong enough for those following the case to make up their minds on who should or shouldn’t be accused of the crime. Now, the majority of those who support Britain’s one-sided conclusion happen to be members of NATO and the EU, while others stood behind the UK due to long-standing relations.
The fact that major Western powers can gang up and “sentence” a foreign country without following the same procedures other countries abide by and according to the basic tenets of international law is chilling. During the Cold War, not one Western nation would have dared to make such a provocation and yet today it is carried out with unrestrained ease. Such actions are nothing more than a form of Western bullying that threatens global peace and justice.
Over the past few years the international standard has been falsified and manipulated in ways never seen before. The fundamental reason behind reducing global standards is rooted in post-Cold War power disparities. The US, along with their allies, jammed their ambitions into the international standards so their actions, which were supposed to follow a set of standardized procedures and protocol, were really nothing more than profit-seizing opportunities designed only for themselves. These same Western nations activated in full-force public opinion-shaping platforms and media agencies to defend and justify such privileges.
As of late, more foreign countries have been victimized by Western rhetoric and nonsensical diplomatic measures. In the end, the leaders of these nations are forced to wear a hat featuring slogans and words that read “oppressing their own people,” “authoritarian,” or “ethnic cleansing,” regardless of their innocence.
It is beyond outrageous how the US and Europe have treated Russia. Their actions represent a frivolity and recklessness that has grown to characterize Western hegemony that only knows how to contaminate international relations. Right now is the perfect time for non-Western nations to strengthen unity and collaborative efforts among one another. These nations need to establish a level of independence outside the reach of Western influence while breaking the chains of monopolization declarations, predetermined adjudications, and come to value their own judgement abilities.
It’s already understood that to achieve such international collective efforts is easier said than done as they require foundational support before anything can happen. Until a new line of allies emerges, multi-national associations like BRICS, or even the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, need to provide value to those non-Western nations and actively create alliances with them.
What Russia is experiencing right now could serve as a reflection of how other non-Western nations can expect to be treated in the not-to-distant future. Expelling Russian diplomats simultaneously is hardly enough to deter Russia. Overall, it’s an intimidation tactic that has become emblematic of Western nations, and furthermore, such measures are not supported by international law and therefore unjustified. More importantly, the international community should have the tools and means to counterbalance such actions.
The West is only a small fraction of the world and is nowhere near the global representative it once thought it was. The silenced minorities within the international community need to realize this and prove just how deep their understanding is of such a realization by proving it to the world through action. With the Skripal case, the general public does not know the truth, and the British government has yet to provide a shred of evidence justifying their allegations against Russia.
It is firmly believed that accusations levied by one country to another that are not the end results of a thorough and professional investigation should not be encouraged. Simultaneously expelling diplomats is a form of uncivilized behavior that needs to be abolished immediately.
UK’s new defense strategy: Con-Fusion Doctrine
By John Wight | RT | March 30, 2018
The Fusion Doctrine – no, not the title of the next Bond movie, the name of the UK’s new security and defense strategy.
And, yes, you guessed it: a key threat cited within this security strategy, set out in a new UK government report, is Russia.
Described as a mechanism to “strengthen [Britain’s] collective approach to national security,” the Fusion Doctrine aims to combine and harness the UK’s economic, security, technological, and military capabilities with this objective in mind.
As mentioned, among the array of threats cited, Russia, predictably, has been placed front and center. This is on the basis that Moscow was allegedly responsible for, with regard to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, the “indiscriminate and reckless use of a military-grade nerve agent on British soil.”
It gets worse. The Skripal poisoning, we are told, “happened against a backdrop of a well-established pattern of Russian State aggression. Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea was the first time since the Second World War that one sovereign nation has forcibly taken territory from another in Europe. Russia has fomented conflict in the Donbas and supported the Assad regime, including when the regime deliberately ignored its obligation to stop using chemical weapons. Russia has also violated the national airspace of European countries and mounted a sustained campaign of cyber espionage and disruption, including meddling in elections.”
The scale of the distortion incorporated in the aforementioned passage is simply breathtaking. It confirms that in Whitehall ideological blinkers are mandatory when it comes to surveying a world that London, in its capacity as a key pillar of the Pax Americana that ensued after the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, has played an egregious role in helping to destabilize.
This pattern of destabilization includes the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia, culminating in the bombing of Serbia in 1999 (of which more later); the destruction of Iraq in 2003; the destruction of Libya in 2011, leading not to the birth of liberal democracy, as claimed, but instead to the country being transformed from a functioning state into a failed state, precipitating the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. This pattern also includes an attempt to topple the legitimate Syrian government over the past seven years with support for an opposition dominated by sectarian extremists intent on turning Syria into a vast killing field of its minority communities.
As for Crimea, I deal with the fatuous claim of Russian aggression here. Suffice to say that in 2014 a democratically elected and internationally recognized government in Kiev was overthrown in a violent coup, actively supported and sponsored by Western governments, including London.
The coup – which went by the suitably benign name of Euromaidan, after Maidan Square in central Kiev, where peaceful protests turned into armed confrontation with Ukrainian police and security personnel after neo-Nazis and fascists took charge – was a brutal violation of the democratic rights of millions of Ukrainian citizens, including millions of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, people whose physical well-being was placed in danger as a consequence.
The claim that Russia’s actions in the aftermath of these ugly events can be described as aggression is ludicrous. On the contrary, the intervention undertaken by Moscow compares favorably to NATO’s intervention in the internal affairs of internationally recognized governments, specifically the bombing of Serbia in 1999, which led to the establishment of Kosovo as an independent state in 2008.
The key differences between Kosovo and Crimea are: 1) unlike the former, not one bomb or missile was dropped and not one shot was fired during Russia’s intervention, and 2) unlike the people of Kosovo, the people of Crimea were afforded the right to decide their future in a democratic referendum thereafter.
Theresa May’s assertion that Russia was responsible for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury is at the time of writing as baseless as the accusation of Russian state interference in the 2016 US presidential election, the Brexit referendum of the same year, or indeed the litany of national elections that have failed to turn up the desired and expected result in recent times.
Rather than base her assertion on concrete evidence, May has allowed her government to be led by a feral media, which has whipped up toxic Russophobic tropes redolent of the 19th rather than 21st century, into adopting a new Cold War paradigm.
The real motive for this paradigm is not concern over any threat Moscow may pose to Western democracy or security, as claimed. The real motive for this new Cold War paradigm is Russia’s refusal to bow to Western hegemony – the very same that has been responsible for unremitting chaos and carnage in the name of democracy.
Thus the UK’s new Fusion Doctrine should be renamed the Confusion Doctrine.
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From the Archives
Politicians lie
By Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance | August 18, 2013
There is no way to say this truth nicely: Politicians lie. That includes Japanese, American, Egyptian, Israeli, and Palestinian politicians! Is there something more common sense than that? Yet, so many citizens around the world believe their own politicians or wistfully acknowledge lies but think it is part of the job needed to run things. They believe even when politicians contradict themselves blatantly. This phenomenon is rather remarkable. It is a dissonance and disconnect from reality that many seem oblivious to. It is very dangerous because it can lead to accepting rationales for going to war. These can be deadly wars that lead to millions of lives lost as happened in what was called World War 1 and WW2. Even when incredible and declassified evidence abound, politicians continue to lie and old mythologies refuse to die. Here are just a few of the countless lies told to us over the past few decades… continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- RSF military group defects, joins Sudanese army: State media
- Ireland goalkeeper refuses to play ‘Israel’ as squad weighs boycott
- China pushes back against US on Cuba, Iran
- Ukrainian Soldiers, Potential Mercenaries: Have Gun, Will Travel!
- Burnham’s UN debut… A masterclass in British disinformation
- Iran flights continue despite US aviation sanctions
- Global Tipping Points Lead the World Into a State of Entropy
- The day-after at the White House: USA and Xi Jinping
- The Geopolitical Balance in the Red Sea: The UAE Being Displaced by New Players
- Iraqi resistance group vows to stage airport sit-ins over Iran aerial blockade
- If Americans Knew
- Deconstructing Netanyahu’s pants-on-fire UN rant – Daily Update
- Trump betrayed voters with his campaign lies and prioritized a foreign country once he took office
- Netanyahu calls Israel’s war in Gaza ‘opposite of genocide’ in UN speech to near-empty hall
- Settler Kidnappings: Torture, Sexual Abuse and Terrorisation of Palestinian Abductees as Israel Deepens Annexation of West Bank
- Gaza winter nears as 162,000 tents become unusable, raising fears of humanitarian crisis
- Netanyahu says, “It’s the opposite of genocide”; UN says Gaza economy is world’s ‘most severe crisis on record’ – Daily Update
- Israel’s US-Backed Assault on Gaza Has Created the ‘World’s Most Severe Economic Crisis on Record’: UN
- ‘Protecting U.S. Citizens’… From Israel
- ‘This is where I live now, the back of a truck’: a day in the life of a grandmother in Gaza
- In UN Speech, Iran’s President Displays Pictures of Children Killed by US, Brings Attention to Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
