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Craig Murray kept in Strange Limbo, can’t gain access to Alex Salmond trial

By Craig Murray | March 10, 2020

My efforts to accredit to cover the Alex Salmond trial continue to be stonewalled. I therefore cannot gain access to the court which is closed to the public while the anonymous accusers give their evidence. Media only are able to watch via CCTV from a media room, which is where I am trying to get. The established media are of course overwhelmingly hostile to Alex Salmond.

You will recall the media behaviour at the coverage of the Julian Assange hearing. They turned up in force on day one and gave major coverage to the prosecution opening statement. The headlines screamed that Julian Assange had “put lives at risk”, and was just an “ordinary criminal”. They then almost entirely left, and gave virtually zero coverage to the defence’s comprehensive refutation of these arguments.

I suspect we are going to see a similar dynamic at play here. The prosecution led yesterday with its key witness and the most serious accusations. The media have used screaming headlines – today’s Times has five separate articles on the trial – and Ms H’s accusations are given in enormous, salacious detail. I am willing to wager very large sums of money that the defence are not given nearly the same level of coverage. Which is why I need to be in there to record what really happens.

I have established firmly that I am not being kept out for reasons of space. I have been passed around various officials, but the lady from “judicial communications” in charge of the court is willing to admit me provided the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service (SCTS) is willing to accredit me with their media card. I filled in the forms for that and sent in the photo last week. So far no response from SCTS, except that they yesterday referred me to “judicial communications”, who referred me straight back to SCTS again. The old runaround.

I am extremely frustrated by this as this is the key witness (I know who Ms H is, incidentally) and key evidence I am missing. There are a number of other subjects on which I might be blogging, but the annoyance is knocking my concentration at present, for which I apologise.

March 10, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

UK press acts as ‘appendage of the state’ when reporting on foreign policy, new analysis shows

RT | March 9, 2020

A new analysis of British media’s coverage of foreign policy has found that, by and large, the UK press acts as “an appendage of the state” and has been “misinforming the public” and “failing to report” completely on key issues.

The statistical analysis was carried out by Declassified UK, a new “public service journalism” project investigating Britain’s foreign,military and intelligence policies and run by journalist and historian Mark Curtis.

On Twitter, Curtis said the current state of UK press reporting on foreign policy is “shocking” and that the media was “systematically misinforming” the public on numerous issues, as well as routinely “falsely reporting” on the UK’s “supposed benevolent role” around the world.

Among its findings, Declassified UK said that the term “rules-based international order” has been used in 339 press articles over the past five years — and that Britain is invariably cast as an upholder of that order, despite being “as much a violator of international rules as any official enemy.”

Yemen, Syria and the OPCW

When it comes to the war in Yemen, the press has “overwhelmingly failed” to report the extent to which this is also a British war due to its key role in arming Saudi Arabia.

While many articles covered UK arms exports to Riyadh, “no articles could be found” mentioning the UK’s role in storing and issuing bombs for Saudi aircraft and maintaining warplanes at key operating bases.

The UK media has also mostly “ignored” British military support programs in Saudi Arabia itself, showing a “lack of interest on the part of journalists to expose key aspects of UK foreign policy,” it said.

On the war in Syria, the Times and Telegraph have reported only “sporadically” on Britain’s involvement in the conflict, while the Guardian has accused the UK of having “failed to act” in the war-torn country — despite the fact that Britain began covert operations in Syria as early as 2011.

In addition, comments from former OPCW director Jose Bustani noting “irregular behavior” in the watchdog’s controversial Douma investigation were reported in “only one” press outlet — the Mail on Sunday. Three whistleblowers raised the alarm last year about what they claim was the suppression of key information from the OPCW’s official report on the alleged chemical attack, but their concerns have received little airing by British journalists.

Failure on Assange

The UK press has also failed in its duty to report fully on the case of jailed WikiLeaks founder and whistleblower Julian Assange, the analysis found. “No UK press outlet” has written about UN special rapporteur Nils Melzer’s letter to the government calling for officials to be investigated for “criminal conduct” in relation to Assange’s case. Melzer has repeatedly said that Assange is being subjected to “psychological torture” at Belmarsh Prison.

In contrast, the British press frequently highlights UN reports on the torture and imprisonment of journalists in foreign countries, it noted.

Israel and GCHQ

Despite reporting in Israeli media on the “unprecedented” recent British-Israeli military cooperation, there was no coverage by the UK press of Israel’s first-ever deployment of fighter jets to Britain last year — or of an admission in parliament in 2018 that the UK was offering military training to Israel.

The analysis also found that GCHQ’s covert action program known as JTRIG has been specifically mentioned “less than a dozen times” in the national press since Edward Snowden revealed it in 2014 — and all were brief mentions in articles focusing on other subjects. “This is in sharp contrast to the vast attention paid to Russian covert programmes,” Curtis wrote.

The research, which is the first in a two-part series, covered national print media and did not include the national broadcasters like the BBC.

Ultimately, the study found that the British public is being “bombarded” by views which support the priorities of UK policymakers and there is only a “very small space” in the British press for independent analysis of foreign policy.

March 9, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Mounting concern over SAS operations in southern Syria

British SAS or SBS soldier in action in Syria
Press TV – March 8, 2020

There is mounting concern in the region about the nature and scale of British Special Forces deployment to southern Syria.

The concern comes in the wake of an exclusive report by the Daily Mirror (March 05) that two RAF Chinook helicopters “packed with special forces” troops and medics had “swooped” into southern Syria to rescue a wounded Special Air Service (SAS) operative.

According to the Mirror, the casualty was airlifted from “deep inside the warzone” to a medical facility in Erbil, northern Iraq.

Whilst the Mirror doesn’t say exactly where in southern Syria the SAS soldier was operating, the reference to “warzone” would suggest Deraa province, in the southwest of the country.

There have been clashes in recent days between Syrian government forces and terrorist groups controlling parts of the town of Al-Sanamayn, situated 50 kilometers south of the capital, Damascus.

Based on the realities on the ground, there is mounting speculation that Britain’s elite SAS could be lending a helping hand to anti-government forces in and around Al-Sanamayn.

British Special Forces, both in the form of the SAS and its allied unit, the Special Boat Service (SBS), have been operating in Syria for seven years.

According to the Mirror, more than 30 British special operatives have been injured in Syria. There has been at least one combat fatality, that of Sergeant Matt Tonroe, who was killed in a joint US/UK operation in March 2018.

Late last year it was reported that British Special Forces in Syria were beating a hasty retreat following US President, Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria.

The latest incident appears to indicate that the SAS and SBS continue to operate in Syria based on the needs of allied Syrian rebel and terrorist groups.

The exfiltration of the injured SAS soldier will cause huge concern as the rescue operation involved RAF choppers taking off from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus before flying through Israeli airspace to northern Jordan and onto southwestern Syria.

This brazen violation of Syrian sovereignty is likely to aggravate Britain’s outlaw status in Damascus, where both the Syrian government and people take a dim view of Britain’s hostile interference in their internal affairs.

March 8, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Foreign Propaganda Interference Done Right: Brits in 1940s U.S.

By Steve Sailer – VDARE – 02/22/2020

From the Washington Post:

Bernie Sanders briefed by U.S. officials that Russia is trying to help his presidential campaign

By Shane Harris, Ellen Nakashima, Michael Scherer and Sean Sullivan
Feb. 21, 2020 at 1:16 p.m. PST

U.S. officials have told Sen. Bernie Sanders that Russia is attempting to help his presidential campaign as part of an effort to interfere with the Democratic contest, according to people familiar with the matter.

President Trump and lawmakers on Capitol Hill also have been informed about the Russian assistance to the Vermont senator, those people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.

It is not clear what form that Russian assistance has taken.

So … that clears that up!

Let me guess, though: I bet some Russian … trolls … are posting … memes!

For example, here’s a high quality 2016 Russian interference effort:

On the other hand, if you want an example of Foreign Interference done right, consider the 1941 Hollywood movie That Hamilton Woman starring Vivien Leigh as Emma Hamilton and Laurence Olivier as Admiral Horatio Nelson, victor over Napoleon’s navy at Trafalgar. From Wikipedia:

The film was a critical and financial success, and while on the surface the plot is both a war story and a romance set in Napoleonic times, it was also intended to function as a deliberately pro-British film that would portray Britain positively within the context of World War II which was being fought at that time. At the time the film was released France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Denmark had all surrendered to the Nazis and the Soviet Union was still officially allied to them, correspondingly the British were fighting against the Nazis alone and felt the need to produce films that would both boost their own morale, and also portray them sympathetically to the foreign world, and in particular, to the United States. …

Shot in the United States during September and October 1940,[10] That Hamilton Woman defines Britain’s struggle against Napoleon in terms of resistance to a dictator who seeks to dominate the world.[11] The film was intended to parallel the current situation in Europe and was intended as propaganda at a time before the attack on Pearl Harbor when the United States was still formally neutral. … Stars Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier were newlyweds at the time of filming and were considered a “dream couple.” …

While That Hamilton Woman was marketed as historical romance, its subtext falls into the “war propaganda” category.[16] In July 1941, the isolationist group America First Committee (AFC) targeted That Hamilton Woman and three other major Hollywood feature films (The Great Dictator, Chaplin/United Artists, 1940; Foreign Correspondent, Wanger/United Artists, 1940; The Mortal Storm, MGM, 1940) as productions that “seemed to be preparing Americans for war.” …

Critical sources usually point out that That Hamilton Woman was Winston Churchill’s favorite film.[19][Note 1] In her research on the subject, film historian Professor Stacey Olster reveals that at the time the film was made, Alexander Korda’s New York offices were “supplying cover to MI-5 agents gathering intelligence on both German activities in the United States and isolationist sentiments among makers of American foreign policy.”[20] According to Anthony Holden, Olivier’s biographer, That Hamilton Woman “became Exhibit A in a case brought against Korda by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Committee had accused him of operating an espionage and propaganda center for Britain in the United States—a charge Korda only escaped by virtue of the fact that his scheduled appearance before the committee on December 12, 1941 was preempted by the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor five days earlier”.

From HistoryNet:

In one scene, whose significance was lost on no one who saw the film, Nelson declares, “You cannot make peace with dictators. You have to destroy them.” Korda always claimed that Churchill had written that line. More pro-British films poured out of Hollywood that year, among them A Yank in the R.A.F., starring Tyrone Power as an American flier who fights in the Battle of Britain, and a raft of melodramatic spy movies depicting sinister Nazi agents at work to undermine America.

The level of talent of British propagandists operating in America in the 1940s — e.g., besides movie stars like Olivier, Leigh, and Cary Grant, there were also Isaiah Berlin, C.S. Forester, Roald Dahl, Alfred Duff Cooper, Ian Fleming, and ad man David Ogilvy — was substantially higher than whatever Russia, Saudi Arabia, or China can muster today. For example, from Wikipedia:

In late March 1942, while in London, [fighter pilot Roald Dahl] met the Under-Secretary of State for Air, Major Harold Balfour, at his club. Impressed by Dahl’s war record and conversational abilities, Balfour appointed the young man as assistant air attaché at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C.

… As part of his duties as assistant air attaché, Dahl was to help neutralise the isolationist views still held by many Americans by giving pro-British speeches and discussing his war service; the United States had entered the war only the previous December, following the attack on Pearl Harbor.[58]

At this time [Roald] Dahl met the noted British novelist C. S. Forester [Horatio Hornblower, The African Queen], who was also working to aid the British war effort. Forester worked for the British Ministry of Information and was writing propaganda for the Allied cause, mainly for American consumption. The Saturday Evening Post had asked Forester to write a story based on Dahl’s flying experiences; Forester asked Dahl to write down some RAF anecdotes so that he could shape them into a story. After Forester read what Dahl had given him, he decided to publish the story exactly as Dahl had written it.

.. Later he worked with such other well-known British officers as Ian Fleming (who later published the popular James Bond series) and David Ogilvy [future author of Confessions of an Advertising Man], promoting Britain’s interests and message in the US and combating the “America First” movement.

March 7, 2020 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Two Years Later: The Skripal Case Is Weirder Than Ever

By Matthew Ehret | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 6, 2020

While navigating through today’s propaganda-heavy world of misinformation, spin and outright creative writing which appears to have replaced conventional journalism, it is most important that two qualities are active in the mind of any truth-seeker. The first quality is the adherence to a strong top down perspective, both historic and global. This is vital in order to guide us as a sort of compass or North Star used by sailors navigating across the ocean. The second quality is a strong power of logic, memory and discernment of wheat vs. chaff to process the mountains of data that slaps us in the face from all directions like sand in a desert storm.

As the second anniversary of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal has arrived, it is a useful time to take these qualities and revisit this bizarre moment of modern history which took place on a park bench in Salisbury UK and which led to one of the greatest frauds of the modern era derailing all attempts to repair relations between Russia and the west.

To do this, I decided to plunge myself into a new book called Skripal in Prison written by Moscow-based journalist John Helmer and published in February 2020.

This incredible little book, which features 26 chapters written between March 2018 to February 2020 originally published on the author’s site Dances with Bears, unveils an arsenal of intellectual bullets which Helmer skillfully uses to shoot holes into every inconsistency, contradiction and outright lie holding up the structure of the narrative that “there is no alternative conclusion other than that the Russian State was culpable for the attempted murder of Mr. Skripal and his daughter”. This line was asserted without a shred of actual evidence by Theresa May in the House of Commons on March 16, 2018 and in the months that followed, western nations were pressured to expel Russian diplomats (23 in Britain, 60 in the US, 33 across the EU), close down consulates (one Russian consulate in San Francisco and one American consulate in St Petersburg) and impose waves of sanctions against Russia.

Four months after the Skripals (and one unfortunate detective named Sgt. Nick Bailey) were released from British hospital care, two more figures were stricken with Novichok poisoning and taken to hospital on June 30 with one of them (Dawn Sturgess) dying 9 days later. This too was blamed immediately on Russia.

Helmer’s research systematically annihilates the official narratives with the craftsmanship of a legal attorney, taking the reader through several vital questions which shape the book’s composition as a whole, and which I shall lay out for you here:

  1. Why have Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia fallen off the face of the Earth since their release from Salisbury hospital? It is known that one controlled video was recorded featuring Yulia speaking, and several short calls to family were made by Yulia and her father after their poisoning… but nothing more. Beyond the fact that it appears the Skripals were kept on an American military base in Gloucestershire for an indeterminate amount of time, Helmer points out “at the point in their recuperation when the two of them were beginning to be explicit in their public remarks about what had happened, their communications were cut off. Nothing more is known to this present day.”
  2. Despite the fact that the UK Prime Minister asserted that a European Arrest Warrant was issued for the two Russians that were alleged to have carried out Putin’s malevolent will onto the poor Skripals – why were no such warrants ever registered in Interpol? Is it because such warrants actually require evidence?
  3. Why did British Intelligence sanction the tearing down of big sections of Skripal’s home at 47 Christie Miller Road in Salisbury due to the apparent “dangers of deadly contaminants”, while only the door handle was tainted with Novichok? If the reasoning was due to health safety, then why were similar actions not taken to the Bourne Hill police station which Sgt. Bradley contaminated or the restaurant and pub which Sergei Skripal went to before his trip to the park … or the contaminated London hotel where the two Russian agents apparently stayed?
  4. Since Novichok is an extremely fast acting substance, generally attacking the nervous system in minutes, how is it possible that the time separating the Skripals’ moment of contamination to the moment of losing consciousness on a park bench was over three hours?! How is this possible? Similarly how was it possible that Sgt. Bailey’s point of contamination at Skripal’s home occurred a full 12 hours before he felt the need to go to the hospital?
  5. What the hell was up with the strange case of the two unfortunate victims of the July 2018 Novichok poisoning in Amesbury (9 miles from Salisbury)? Were Dawn Sturgess and her partner Charlie Rowley simply collateral damage in an MI6 effort to plug a missing hole in the narrative caused by a lack of any evidence of a device used to apply the nerve agent to the door handle in the first place? Why does Rowley (a known heroin addict) have no recollection where he found the perfume bottle filled with Novichok which he gifted to Sturgess on June 26? Why was the perfume bottle only found by authorities on Rowley’s kitchen counter two days after Sturgess died on July 9th even though a search for Novichok had been carried out at his apartment beginning with the couple’s admission into Salisbury hospital on June 30?
  6. What was the role of the Ministry of Defense’s Porton Down chemical laboratories in this bizarre story? The lab itself was located just a few miles from the crime scene, and the first responder on the scene was an off-duty Colonel named Alison McCourt who happened to be shopping nearby and rushed to the scene. Helmer describes how Col. McCourt is head of nursing for the British Army and Senior Health Advisor which connects her closely to the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down which also happened to have held a major chemical warfare exercise named Toxic Dagger in the area just two weeks earlier. Are these things nothing but coincidences?
  7. Porton Down labs which tested the Skripal blood samples and Novichok at the Skripal residence is part of the Ministry of Defense and to this day, no public admission of those samples’ existence at the labs has occurred. Requests by Helmer and others to receive confirmation of from the labs according to Freedom of Information laws have been denied outright on the grounds of “the public interest”. Why? Could it be because blood tests were never actually carried out? Helmer’s book probes this question deeply and the lack of evidence will shock you.
  8. How about the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)? Since the OPCW ran parallel tests of the apparent blood samples of the Skripals as well as the later July victims Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley to get “matches” with the novichok traces in a perfume bottle and Skripal door handle, why has evidence of these samples not been made available? Also why was a British intelligence officer the only figure who oversaw the samples taken to the OPCW for verification? In fact, Helmer points out that the one Swiss contract laboratory (Spiez) associated with the OPCW has contradicted all British claims that any “match” exists between the Skripal samples and Novichok A-234 poisoning.
  9. Finally, Helmer asks: Why were all OPCW Executive Council votes in regards to matters surrounding the Skripal case, taken in secret, and thus in conflict with its own charter and why was Russia denied the right to share in the investigation of the Novichok attack as guaranteed in Articles XIII and IX of the OPCW Chemical Weapons convention? Could that have something to do with the role of former OPCW Director General Ahmet Üzümcü, a Turkish NATO-phile, who Helmer notes “has also been a member of the NATO staff in charge of expanding NATO military operations to the Russian frontier, as well as NATO operations in Ukraine and Syria.” In 2019, Üzümcü was inducted into the Order of St Michael and St George by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the Empire.

Helmer goes on to make the point that the overarching dynamic shaping the events of the Skripal/Novichok affair are guided by the collapsing western empire which has been working tirelessly to surround Russia with a ballistic missile shield while sabotaging all efforts by genuine patriots in the west from establishing positive alliances with Russia.

Taking the opportunity of the second anniversary of the Skripal affair to read this book is not only a valuable exercise in logic but also key into the desperate and increasingly fear-driven mind of the London-centered deep state which is quickly losing its grip both on reality and the very influence it had spent generations putting in place.

March 6, 2020 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

The Skripal Case – Two Years On

OffGuardian | March 4, 2020

It’s been two years to the day since disgraced former military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, were allegedly found on a park bench in Salisbury, near unconscious and apparently very unwell.

A lot has been said about the unanswered questions revolving around the incident. But perhaps the best of way of demonstrating the peculiarity of the alleged situation is to simply relate, in full, the “official version”.

Here it is:

  • Sergei Skripal, a Russian military intelligence officer, was found guilty of spying for the UK in 2006, and sentenced to 13 years in prison.
  • In 2010 he was released and traded to the United Kingdom as part of a spy swap. Having settled in the UK Sergei lived a quiet and comfortable life of retirement, so far as we know
  • Eight years later, in early 2018, with a Presidential election looming and just weeks before Russia was due to host the FIFA World Cup, Vladimir Putin decided to assassinate him for as yet obscure reasons.
  • The GU, Russia’s military intelligence unit, dispatched two of their elite officers, who proceeded to fly direct from Moscow under aliases they had allegedly already employed and using Russian passports.
  • These alleged assassins carried with them two perfume bottles full of “Novichok”, allegedly one of the deadliest nerve agents ever devised. This would be enough to kill around 800,000 people.
  • On arriving in the UK these highly-trained covert agents book a hotel with a CCTV camera on the front door, and the next day, March 3, they travel to Salisbury by train, allegedly to recon the area, then return to London. They are apparently observed by CCTV camera’s the entire time.
  • The day following, March 4, they again travel to Salisbury, this time the master assassins walk to Skripal’s house and somehow “smear” the liquid Novichok on the handle of his front door.
  • No eye-witness, photograph or piece of CCTV footage has ever been made publicly available to show either of these two men anywhere in the area of Sergei Skripal’s house.
  • The whereabouts of the opened bottle of poison have never been established.
  • Having applied the poison, the two highly trained assassins do two things before returning to London. 1) They drop their second, unopened, bottle of novichok (presumably enough to kill approx 400,000 people) in a charity donation bin, rather than destroying it or taking it back to Russia. 2) They stop by an antiques store to browse.
  • The two assassins leave the country that afternoon, flying direct to Moscow, without knowing if their alleged target is dead, and again making no effort to conceal their origins.
  • Despite both handling the poison, and somehow carrying enough of it back to contaminate their hotel room, neither of the men – nor any of the staff, train passengers or passersby who come into contact with them – ever become sick, even though only 0.2mg of Novichok is an allegedly lethal dose.
  • Later that afternoon, Sergei and Yulia Skripal are found “almost unconscious”on a park bench in Salisbury town centre. It is claimed this was due to contact with the Novichok smeared on Sergei’s door handle, though reports originally stated neither he nor his daughter had returned to the house, and the timing seems to make it unlikely they did
  • The person who found them was the most senior nurse in the British Army (likely in the area as part of Toxic Dagger, the British Military’s landmark chemical weapons training exercise which began Feb 20th and ran on until March 12th).
  • The nurse and her family administer “emergency aid” to the two alleged poisoning victims. Neither she nor anyone else on the scene, nor any of the first responders, ever experience any symptoms of nerve agent poisoning. Neither do any of the other people the Skripal’s came into contact with that day.
  • DS Nick Bailey, a CID officer is in contact with the Skripals or their home at this time and subsequently becomes ill. It has never been stated how exactly he was exposed. It was initially reported he was a first responder to the scene, but that story was changed and it was later claimed he visited the Skripal hpouse. Despite the alleged lethality of novichok in even very minute doses, Bailey is fit to return home after 18 days.
  • Porton Down, the British government’s chemical weapons research centre, is brought in to help identify what chemical – if any – the Skripals/Bailey were exposed to.
  • Within a month they release a statement claiming the poison was “a novichok like agent”, but that they could not pinpoint its origin. How they were able to test for a (at the time) theoretical chemical without having a sample to test against, has never been explained.
  • Porton Down is 8 minutes away from Salisbury by car.
  • Nearly four months later, in late June of 2018, Charlie Rowley finds the unopened perfume bottle a full of novichok (whether he bought it from a charity shop or found it in a bin is unclear, both stories have been reported). Upon using the perfume Rowley’s partner, Dawn Sturgess, falls ill. Later that day Rowley also falls ill. Sturgess dies in hospital two weeks later. But Rowley survives. Making him the fourth person in this narrative to survive exposure to an agent lethal in doses as small as 0.2mg.
  • Sergei Skripal and Julia both recovered and allegedly chose to live secluded lives. Sergei has not appeared in public at all since allegedly being found on that park bench. Yulia made one brief press statement. Their current whereabouts are totally unknown. Their family in Russia have apparently been denied all access to them. DS Bailey was initially also keen to maintain his privacy but has subsequently given at least one interview some while after the event.

This is the UK government’s version of what happened. Unvarnished and unsatirised. None of it is disputed, exaggerated or speculative.

If you can see any unanswered questions, logical gaps or peculiar coincidences…you are likely a Russian bot.

Interesting commentary

March 4, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Salisbury poisoning unleashed Russian bogeyman … but where are the Skripals 2 years on?

By Simon Rite | RT | March 4, 2020

Forget Where’s Wally, what we really want to know is where are the Skripals? It’s exactly two years to the day since the Russian spy and his daughter were novichoked in Salisbury, and we’ve still not seen hide nor hair of them.

Former double agent Sergei has been completely off-grid, while Yulia Skripal was seen in a highly staged video in 2018, filmed in an anonymous but pleasant leafy glade shortly after recovering from her poisoning ordeal; but, apart from that, there have been no statements or updates about them at all.

The most recent piece of ‘information’, and I use that term loosely, to leak out about their whereabouts came this weekend from Britain’s Mail on Sunday, courtesy of a source which became ubiquitous throughout the Skripal saga, the reliably unreliable “security insiders.” It’s always amazing how willing these apparent insiders are to release top-level secrets to the home of the “sidebar of shame.”

The latest speculation from ‘security insiders’ is that the Skripals are hoping to head for a new life down under in Australia after “effectively living under house arrest since the attack.” This means either those insiders are the leakiest spies in the world, or the Skripals are going to be nowhere near Australia anytime soon.

The house arrest must be at Julian Assange in Belmarsh levels of security, because even the Skripals’ family in Russia say they haven’t heard from them in months.

So all quiet on the Skripal front and, frankly speaking, it’s all quiet on the geopolitical front, too, and in the media. The disputed events of March 4, 2018, over poisoned spies and their aftermath formed the biggest story on the planet, and not just because the whole world finally started paying attention to the majesty of Salisbury cathedral’s glorious 123-metre spire.

This incident seemed like it might have genuine life-changing political consequences. Britain entered the phrase “highly likely” into the lexicon of geopolitics, and [then-PM] Theresa May’s declaration that it was “highly likely” that the Kremlin was to blame was deemed strong enough to see the West turn en masse against Moscow, and Russian diplomats and ‘diplomats’ were expelled by the dozen, by London and its allies across the world. It seemed the bar for state-to-state accusations had been lowered.

Russia to this day denies involvement in what happened in Salisbury.

So what has changed? If anything, all that has changed over the last two years is a desire to get back to business, to rebuild ties and move on. Some of those expelled diplomats have reportedly moved back.

French leader Emmanuel Macron is pushing hard for relations between the West and Moscow to be repaired, something Germany needs little encouragement for.

Britain is still pretending to be in a huff, but British imports of Russian oil were up 57 percent last year, so realpolitik reigns supreme in London, as ever.

Boris Johnson is now the prime minister and with a thumping majority doesn’t need to use bogeyman Russia as a tool to look strong quite as much as his predecessor did. Johnson and Putin even met in January and there are reports the prime minister is considering an invitation to attend a second world war commemoration parade in Moscow this May.

And as for the media, it’s all gone quiet there, too. Skripal coverage is about as common in the mainstream now as coverage of Julian Assange’s imprisonment. He’s a journalist whose supporters say is ‘highly likely’ a victim of a demonstrable state campaign against him because he attempted to uncover the misdeeds of power. However, a boring attack on free speech is nowhere near as exciting as a poisoned spy, is it?!

Simon Rite is a writer based in London for RT, in charge of several projects including the political satire group #ICYMI. Follow him on Twitter @SiWrites

March 4, 2020 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Spike in suicides amongst veterans of British military campaigns in Afghanistan

British forces in Afghanistan committed countless abuses against the local population
Press TV – March 2, 2020

Veterans of Britain’s recent costly military campaigns in Afghanistan are killing themselves in record numbers.

According to the Times newspaper, some 14 former and serving army personnel have killed themselves in the past two months alone.

This unusually high number is compounded by the fact that all the deceased are from a “particular grouping” involved in Operation Herrick, which guided all avowed British military actions in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2014.

The government’s response to this apparent emergency has been muted, with John Mercer, the minister for veterans, merely expressing “concern” at the spike in deaths.

The latest spike comes against the backdrop of repeated warnings by British military chiefs of the deteriorating mental health of serving military personnel and veterans alike.

Last November, the former head of the army, General Lord Dannatt, warned that suicide among veterans has become an “epidemic of our time”.

Whilst the precise reasons for the latest spike in suicides is largely unknown, disillusionment with the British military in general, and the UK’s pointless military intervention in Afghanistan in particular, are believed to be major factors.

The widespread disillusionment in the British army is likely to be compounded by the recent announcement of a so-called peace deal between the United States and the Afghan Taliban.

The deal is likely to intensify widespread feelings amongst British veterans of Afghan military campaigns that the entire effort had been in vain.

That feeling is likely to be compounded by the British government’s mixed messaging on the so-called peace deal.

The Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, played down the significance of the so-called peace deal by describing it in reductive terms as a “small but important step”.

By contrast, Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, glorified the deal as a “significant moment in the pursuit of peace”.

March 2, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

No More Air Travel is What Net Zero Means

By Harry Wilkinson – GWPF – 27/02/20

No-one can be surprised at the judges’ decision to block a third runway at Heathrow. Collectively, the country has failed to grasp the implications of deep decarbonisation.

Many people will regard the decision to block a third runway at Heathrow as an unwelcome intrusion of judges into our democratic system. They will be bemused that those judges cited the Paris Agreement to justify their decision, when one can hardly see China*, or indeed any other signatory to the Paris Agreement, blocking vital airport expansion because of that same treaty.

But to blame the judges is to miss the point. All they have done is to take the commitments of that accord and the Government’s pledge to achieve net zero emissions at face value. It is simply a matter of fact that such expansion cannot be reconciled with reducing our emissions, at least in the short term. This is what net zero means. It means to abandon the pursuit of growth, the pursuit of new opportunities, of new trading links, of progress and resign the country to a new era of eco austerity. Today brings that decision, and the government’s shameful failure to be upfront about its implications, into sharp focus.

When the Paris Agreement was signed it was heralded as an extraordinary moment in the fight against climate change. Green journalists parroted this view, useful as it was to the politicians and activists desperate to show that some progress had been made. Those familiar with the details could see that all it really did was to confirm countries’ existing plans. China, India, and other developing countries were allowed to continue increasing their emissions, and the EU reaffirmed its own emissions targets. America’s inclusion was more significant, but it wasn’t long until Trump announced his intention to withdraw.

The end result is to leave Britain uniquely vulnerable to the economic consequences of rapid decarbonisation policies. While the more cautious approach of Eastern European countries will act as brake for the EU, Britain is faced with a fundamental political choice as it leaves. It can choose to embrace the free market and technological progress, which will lead to the more efficient use of resources and indeed come to reduce the consumption of almost every natural resource. Or it can continue with an opportunity-destroying, insular and unilateral approach of state-mandated decarbonisation in one country. Time to choose.

*China, by the way, is planning to build 216 new airports by 2035.

February 27, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

UK Defence Minister Announces Development of New Nuclear Warhead as ‘Effective’ Deterrent

By Tim Korso – Sputnik – February 25, 2020

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has announced via a written statement to parliament that the UK will be developing a replacement warhead while continuing to maintain its existing nuclear warheads until they are decommissioned. The development of the new warheads was spurred by the need to respond to new threats in a changing security environment, the defence secretary said.

“We will maintain our Trident nuclear deterrent, which guarantees our security. To ensure the government maintains an effective deterrent throughout the commission of the Dreadnought Class ballistic missile submarine we are replacing our existing nuclear warheads to respond to future threats and the security environment”, Wallace stated.

Wallace said to the parliament that highly skilled teams will be formed in close coordination between the Ministry of Defence’s Nuclear Organisation and the UK’s Atomic Weapons Establishment to develop the new weapon. The defence secretary added that the teams will also collaborate with the US to ensure that the new warhead stays compatible with the Trident Strategic Weapon Systems.

The move comes as part of a 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review, which outlined the UK’s strategy of maintaining an independent minimum credible deterrent in the form of nuclear weapons. The stance was adopted as a result of the 2007 government decision supported by a parliamentary vote to uphold the country’s nuclear deterrents beyond the early 2030s.

February 25, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

‘Deliberate hoax’: Russian military denies NGO report of airstrikes in Idlib

RT | February 24, 2020

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports of Russian airstrikes on two villages in Idlib province have nothing to do with reality, the Russian military said, adding that none of its planes operated in that area on Monday.

“The information provided by the British NGO is a deliberate hoax,” Rear Admiral Oleg Zhuravlev, head of the Russian Center for the Reconciliation in Syria, said at a briefing.

Earlier in the day, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) claimed that an airstrike by Russian and Syrian forces on the villages of Kansafra and Al-Bara in Idlib led to the “killing and injuring of nearly ten Turkish soldiers.”

Ankara has not reported any casualties among its troops in Syria, however.

The SOHR claim came at a moment when Russia and Turkey stand on the brink of war over Syria. Ankara sent troops to Idlib – the last remaining terrorist stronghold in Syria – two weeks ago, provoking deadly clashes with the advancing Syrian army. Turkey has demanded Russia to pressure its allies in Damascus into ceasing its operations in the area, while Moscow blamed Ankara of not fulfilling its earlier promise to separate the “moderate” rebels from terrorists.

Last Thursday, Russian bombers struck militants who had launched an attack on Syrian positions with the support of Turkish artillery. However, both Russia and Turkey said they weren’t looking for a military conflict. A new round of consultation between the sides is being prepared in order to defuse the situation in Idlib, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced on Monday.

SOHR has been one of the key sources of Western media since the conflict in Syria broke out in 2011. However, a 2015 investigation revealed that the entire organization was run by a single man in Coventry, a former convict who fled Syria for the UK and has not been back since.

February 24, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

No Airports, No Imports–Welcome To Year Zero!

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | February 21, 2020

I took a quick look at this story the other day, but have now had time to read the report it was based on:

To many people, “saving the planet” means little more than building wind farms, planting trees and using less plastic. However it is gradually beginning to dawn on the public that the impact on their lives will be substantial.

Even then though, things like scrapping gas boilers and moving to electric cars have been something that “won’t happen for decades, so why worry now?”

However a new study, sponsored by the UK Government, has warned that huge changes to our lifestyles will be necessary, and much sooner than we think, if zero emission targets are to be met.

The report by UK FIRES, called Absolute Zero, calls for all UK airports to be shut by 2050, because there are no practical alternatives for zero emission flight. But as part of this timetable, all airports other than Heathrow, Glasgow and Belfast must shut by 2030.

In a stroke, air travel will be effectively banned for most of the country, as Heathrow simply would not have the capacity to handle more than a small proportion of demand. (Heathrow currently carries a quarter of UK passengers).

But that is just one item on a long list of changes to be forced on the British public. The report concludes that we cannot bank on technological innovations coming to our rescue.

If you thought that we could simply rely on renewable energy, forget it. As UK FIRES points out, even with rapid growth of renewables, we will still need to cut our energy use by 40%, even before air travel and shipping are factored in. And all of this without accounting for the projected population increase.

So forget about electric cars being the solution, because we will not have enough electricity to power them. The recommendation from UK FIRES – have 40% less cars on the road. Their suggestion – use the train more, ignoring the sky high prices, the fact that railways offer very limited routes and how you are supposed to travel around when you get to your destination. The idea that we will all willingly give up our cars to travel by rail or bus is utterly naive.

The report also conveniently ignores the high carbon dioxide footprint in building electric cars in the first place.

Heating is another area where we must cut emissions. UK FIRES expect us to buy heat pumps, seemingly oblivious to the fact they will cost each household a good £10k more than our conventional boilers. They also don’t appear to realise that heat pumps are incapable of supplying the heat we need in the middle of winter, or that the power grid simply could not cope with that sort of spike in demand even if they could.

Or maybe they do! Their guidance includes using heating for less time, in fewer rooms and wearing warm clothes in winter.

Our diet does not escape either, as we will have to give up eating beef and lamb, not to mention frozen ready meals. While we are expected to rely on arable farming instead, they also want fertiliser use to be drastically reduced.

Meanwhile the construction industry is likely to grind to a halt, as cement is phased out. Unfortunately the actual making of cement releases emissions, regardless of the source of the energy used.

Forget about housebuilding, new hospitals and infrastructure, they want us to concentrate on retrofit and adaptation of existing buildings.

Ironically, as even the report admits, we don’t know how to install new renewables or make new energy efficient buildings without cement.

If all of this was not bad enough, they want to ban all imports by 2050, unless they can come via rail, which might be a problem given that we are an island! Of course, we don’t have zero emission freight ships at the moment, and are unlikely to in the foreseeable future.

Quite how we are expected to feed ourselves without importing food is a mystery, unless we return to 1940s style rationing. And you can forget about all of those other things we get from abroad now.

What about, for instance, computers and electronics? We will quickly become an international backwater, without access to the latest technology. It would be like the country returning to 1990s style Nokia phones, VHS and floppy discs!

Some may be substituted by UK made goods, but it is hard to see how industrial capacity could be built back up with the restrictions planned on construction, energy use and industrial emissions.

But it is not only the emissions from shipping which concerns the authors. They also say we must be responsible for all emissions from the production of imported goods.

So how, you might ask, are we supposed to live in this glorious, emission free future?

UK FIRES says we must not worry! We can apparently carry on doing the things we enjoy most, totally emission free. Things like sports, social life, eating, hobbies, games,computing, reading, TV, radio, volunteering and sleeping! According to the report, “we can all do more of these without any impact on emissions.”

Indeed, with the economy and industry destroyed, most of us will have much more time on our hands for these pursuits! (Climate scientists and bureaucrats excluded, naturally).

Nowhere in this dismal little report is there any acknowledgement of the fact that the UK only generates 1% of global emissions. The report starts by stating:

We have to cut our greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050: that’s what climate scientists tell us, it’s what social protesters are asking for and it’s now the law in the UK.

Wrecking the economy is not something we should do, just because a few eco-loon protestors are asking for it. And laws can, of course, be changed.

We must however thank the authors of this report for bringing home the very real and damaging effect that the mad rush to decarbonise will have on peoples’ lives.

And, as they have rightly stated, these changes will have to start being put into practice very soon, certainly during this decade.

For too long, the impact and cost of the Climate Change Act has been deliberately hidden from the public. Partly this has been the result of a political conspiracy between all of the major political parties and establishment in general. It has also been aided and abetted by all of the media, with a handful of notable exceptions.

But their dirty little secret cannot be covered up for much longer.

February 22, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

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