British PM pledges to protect Israel, Jews in dig at Corbyn
Press TV – September 18, 2018
Prime Minister Theresa May has pledged to protect British Jews and what she called “Israel’s right to defend itself” in what appeared to be a veiled attack on Jeremy Corbyn, who has been accused of tolerating anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
Addressing a dinner held by the United Jewish Israel Appeal, which works to build links between British Jews and Israel, May said she was “sickened” by the idea that some Jews had doubt whether Britain was a safe place to raise their children.
“I have come here tonight as prime minister of our country to say that I stand with you,” she told the crowd Monday night. “I stand with the UJIA. I stand with Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. And I stand with the entire Jewish community in Britain.”
The Labour Party has been mired in rows over what critics describe as its failure to address anti-Semitism among party supporters and its initial reluctance to fully adopt a broader definition of anti-Semitism.
Corbyn, a veteran campaigner for Palestinian rights, has come under attack for criticizing the Israeli regime’s policies, which some view as being anti-Semitic. The Labour leader argued earlier this year that party members should be allowed to criticize Israel.
In August, Britain’s former chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks labeled Corbyn anti-Semite and said his 2013 comments about Zionists were the most offensive by a senior British politician in half a century.
Corbyn said five years ago, before he was Labour’s leader, that British Zionists “don’t understand English irony” despite “having lived in this country for a very long time.”
“If we are to stand up for the values that we share – then one of the things we need to do is give young Jewish people the confidence to be proud of their identity – as British, Jewish and Zionist too,” May said.
“There is no contradiction between these identities – and we must never let anyone try to suggest that there should be.”
In a barely coded message to Corbyn, the prime minister said, “Let me be clear: you cannot claim to be tackling racism, if you are not tackling anti-Semitism.”
Furthermore, May said she was committed to strong economic ties between London and Tel Aviv.
“You can also count on my commitment to Israel’s security,” she said. “I am clear that we will always support Israel’s right to defend itself.”
Ofgem exploited national security law to silence us, whistleblowers claim
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | September 17, 2018
From the Guardian :
Britain’s energy regulator has been fighting to keep secret the claims of two whistleblowers who independently raised concerns about potentially serious irregularities in projects worth billions of pounds, the Guardian can reveal.
The two men say Ofgem threatened them with an obscure but sweeping gagging clause that can lead to criminal prosecutions and possible jail terms for those who defy it.
MPs and the whistleblowing charity Protect fear Ofgem is abusing its position and exploiting a law that was intended to protect UK national security – not a regulator from potential embarrassment.
The Labour MP Peter Kyle said: “Whistleblowers save lives and protect our economy from harm; they should be protected by law, not have it used against them.”
One of the whistleblowers told the Guardian he was “continually threatened … for trying to tell the truth. For doing my job and uncovering an issue, Ofgem made my life hell.”
He said the regulator had attempted to “scare me witless with threats of imprisonment” and he felt “utterly ashamed” of Ofgem’s behaviour.
Ofgem said it encouraged staff to report suspected wrongdoing and took their concerns seriously.
Both men worked for Ofgem in entirely different areas of the business and were regarded as qualified experts in their respected fields.
One was Greg Pytel, an economist with oversight of the rollout of the £10.9bn smart meter programme, which is due to be completed in 2020.
Smart meters are electronic devices for homes and businesses that measure the use of electricity and gas. They are designed to make billing easier and to help energy companies manage the supply of electricity more efficiently.
The second whistleblower, who has asked to remain anonymous, worked on the renewable heat incentive (RHI), which offers financial rewards to promote the use of new technologies such as green boilers.
The scheme, which started in 2011, has been controversial – and could eventually cost taxpayers £23bn. Both projects are key to the government’s stated aim of making the UK a low-carbon economy.
The two whistleblowers do not know each other and have not been involved in each other’s cases. They say they are only linked by the reaction of Ofgem to their claims.
They found themselves in similar positions after being tasked with scrutinising elements of the two major projects they were working on between 2014 and 2017. Both raised concerns with their managers.
Instead of welcoming their input and investigating their concerns, the men allege they were bullied, treated unfairly and sidelined to such an extent they felt compelled to bring their grievances to an employment tribunal.
The RHI whistleblower claimed he was “continually ignored or threatened.” In both instances, the men say they were told they would not be allowed to reveal to the tribunal, or anyone else, the concerns they had. They say Ofgem warned them that the details were protected by Section 105 of the Utilities Act 2000.
This prohibits the disclosure of certain types of evidence relevant to the energy sector – and it is so restrictive that those who ignore it can be fined or jailed for up to two years.
At an early hearing of Pytel’s case, the tribunal ruled Ofgem was required to disclose his documents about public procurement arrangements for the smart meter programme, citing the Human Rights Act. It said he had the right to freedom of expression without interference from a public authority. But Ofgem has against appealed the decision.
Peter Daly at Bindmans, the legal firm that is acting for Pytel, said: “Ofgem’s position appears to be that anyone who disclosed or reported the content of his whistleblowing would be themselves committing a criminal offence.
“They [Ofgem] are appealing an employment tribunal order to provide disclosure in the proceedings because they say to do so would be a criminal offence. Ofgem’s appeal therefore indicates that in Ofgem’s view this prohibition extends to Ofgem themselves.”
Daly says if Ofgem wins this legal battle, it would “have a corrosive and asphyxiating effect on the rights of whistleblowers in the energy sector and would create a binding precedent.”
A second hearing of the case will take place in October.
The second whistleblower has described the alleged reaction of his managers when faced with the concerns he raised. “Specifically I was told that if I told the truth, my career with Ofgem would be finished.”
Despite the threats, he said, he briefed the National Audit Office – a move that infuriated Ofgem, he claimed.
He said a senior manager “screamed and shouted” at him, and he was then warned his disclosures were a breach of section 105 of the Utilities Act 2000.
The whistleblower says he left Ofgem last year after being “threatened with imprisonment if I shared information about the wrongdoings that I had witnessed”. He has described Ofgem as being “dishonestly secretive”.
Kyle, a member of the business, energy and industrial strategy select committee, said: “Ofgem do have many commercial secrets that are vital to the wellbeing of our nations’ infrastructure, but the power they have to gag whistleblowers is an extreme one and should be used in only extreme circumstances.
“I’m now extremely concerned about the potential abuse of these powers. Parliament might need to look at who has oversight and scrutiny of them and see if the law needs updating.”
Protect, formerly Public Concern at Work, has been helping both of the Ofgem whistleblowers, and has intervened in one of the ongoing legal cases.
The body’s chief executive, Francesca West, said: “The whole of the UK energy market – that’s more than 600,000 workers – are currently being held to ransom over Section 105 of the Utilities Act, and threatened with a prison sentence if they speak up over wrongdoing. It is utterly shameful.
“Our society needs whistleblowers to speak up, to stop harm. But we also need organisations to be honest, open and operate legally.”
Ofgem said it had only had to consider the use of section 105 once in the last five years.
“In carrying out our duties as the energy regulator, Ofgem handles large amount of information from consumers and businesses which is often both personal in nature and commercially sensitive.
“With the exception of a few prescribed circumstances, section 105 of the Utilities Act 2000 prohibits the disclosure of the information we receive. Section 105 is intended to ensure that consumers and businesses can share their information without fear that it may be subsequently disclosed. Ofgem takes our obligations under law very seriously, including the restrictions in section 105.
“Ofgem adheres to its whistleblowing policy which encourages staff to report suspected wrongdoing as soon as possible, in the knowledge that their concerns will be taken seriously and investigated.”
Curiously the Guardian gives no hint of what the two whistleblowers wanted to tell us.
It does not take a genius to work out the whole smart meter programme has been highly flawed from the outset, and an obscene waste of billions of pounds.
As for the RHI, many more billions are being wasted, often on environmentally damaging projects, and again for the same reasons of reducing CO2 emissions.
The fact that the Guardian has been wholeheartedly behind both schemes might give a clue as to why they are reluctant to tell the whole story.
When Social Networks Care About National Security
By Harry Bentham | OffGuardian | September 16, 2018
Controversies surrounding online fake news, having alarmed political activists in Britain and the US, are prompting social media companies to be more active in combating the alleged threat. For many people in opposition to the policies of US President Donald Trump and Britain’s exit from the EU, the internet is to blame for the situation because it illicitly influenced voters. As a result, increased policing of social networks to root out foreign spies and domestic dissidents seems necessary to them. One of the latest examples is Twitter’s permanent suspension of American conspiracy theorist entertainer Alex Jones.
The responsibility to police the social networks seems to have largely been placed, by pushy and concerned politicians, on the management of tech companies themselves. British MPs and US senators did this by summoning them to hearings and campaigning openly against the internet’s permissiveness on political content, making demands they should shut down dissident and foreign outlets because they have gone too far.
Although the most vocal of them are not actually in the incumbent government and therefore not responsible for national security responses, they are still lawmakers representing constituents and can threaten legislation to compel social media companies to change. Preferring instead to make the policing of social media posts look voluntary, they seem to have capably persuaded the management of the tech companies to enforce their views on national security.
Therefore, now, we are at an awkward point where transnational social networks must care about so-called national security – specifically the US’s national security, based on that country’s strange and self-obsessed drivel about being exceptional and better than others. What next?
Recently, we have seen police-like enforcement action against dissident users and outlets present on a variety of social media platforms and applications used by a probable majority of people in the UK and the US. This removal of controversial figures from online platforms is presented as not being censorship, but rather the enforcement of decent community guidelines by companies that have every right to withhold services. However, this argument is not very convincing. The political pressure has been immense. The results have not been targeted at bad social media behavior like spam and harassment, but against alternate political views on both the left and the right. If we look at the actions of the tech companies, they are not only encouraged by elements of the state but have made themselves into state-like actors by describing themselves as stopping foreign threats and extremism.
Brexit was the mistake of a misled public, perhaps. We are told so by influential media personalities – almost all of them – and the same narrative is presented when it comes to the election of Trump. We are encouraged to lean towards the same common solution to both of these mishaps, and it consists of mostly a crackdown online – especially on Twitter. We will be shutting down online accounts and channels belonging to the supporters of such causes as Trump and Brexit, after quickly and conveniently finding them guilty of being bots or possibly foreign. No attention is given to bad behavior as a whole.
For example, no enforcement action is used against pro-EU accounts or anti-Trump accounts, many of which self-identify as foreign or completely automated. Some even blatantly violate Twitter’s rules on inflated hashtag campaigns, doing things like using the hashtag #FBPE to get followers and retweets from pro-EU bots. Their own determination to trick users and violate the community guidelines is openly celebrated by them, so oblivious are these kinds of activists to their own hypocrisy.
So, in fact, what seems at first a principled argument against bad behavior is really a cliché so we can pretend there was some civilized reason for thuggishly silencing other points of view.
Much of the commentary by the Democratic Party, as with opponents of Brexit in the UK, focuses on national security and the need to silence or eliminate bad people and Russians. It is presented as war, using the language of military propaganda. Being in opposition, these democracy-loving people in the Democratic Party and other groups now presume it is the job of civil society – news networks like CNN and tech companies like Apple mainly – to not only take charge of national security themselves but also engage directly in censorship.
But censorship, the shutting down of opposing views and channels on grounds that they are treasonous, is not an exertion of soft power but hard power. It is a state-like activity, and the sole responsibility of states in all previous cases. By taking part in censorship without being part of the elected leadership of the state and the command structure it possesses to deal with national security threats, unelected elements in civil society are allowed to commit what would be a crime if they had been elected to do it. They engage in a coup-like activity, since, not being part of an elected government, they are nonetheless engaged in state-like activity and are trying to invasively police matters that only a heavily expanded state or dictatorship is ever expected to police.
What is presented above makes it justifiable to consider whether traditional models of state censorship would be more consistent with the rule of law and the importance of a democratic mandate than the current capricious enforcement by private companies. A party whose candidate failed to win power over the whole state, such as the Democrats, is not able to implement a program of state censorship at the moment they most want to. The reason this is the case is because of their very loss in the 2016 US election, which makes them not responsible for matters of national security and not tasked with securing the information space against threats, and yet they try. For them to seek routes around this failure, going to non-elected entities such as the tech companies in an attempt to dictate terms of censorship and actual national security policies via them, can be compared with a coup or a form of separatism. This is the creation of a second state, the seizure of infrastructure to interdict citizens. It is completely outside the bounds of normal political processes, which focus solely on democratic and valid elections as the only means of changing power.
Each point made in relation to the US Democrats here is equally true of influencers and leaders who seek to invalidate the results of the UK’s Brexit referendum, in large part because these are the same kind of civil society actors. In their attempts to portray the activity of the national government itself as treasonous and wrest control of the management of national security from the British government, entities with no democratic mandate are hopelessly creating a second state – one without elections – to take control over national security.
It is not political opposition but a second state because, for the first time ever, it wants not just persuasive soft power but hard power in the capability to suppress targets or eliminate their influence on command. Not only would this realization make these parties and their tech industry collaborators a state-like entity, but it could make such actors as the Democratic Party traitors at war with the electorate.
While this article doesn’t make such a claim, it is one Trump and his supporters have come close to making when the President accused unrelenting elements of the press of being “enemies of the people”, and could eventually create a national security crisis. The reason it would be a crisis is because both Trump and his critics will have a point. It is the role of activists and media to be adversarial, but if they are too aggressive and specifically driven to remove an elected head of state from power, their actions may be seen as the de facto overthrow of the republic to install themselves as political arbiters and impose a moral aristocracy.
Many leaders and followers in the political opposition in the US and UK are supportive of censorship, slithering around constitutional safeguards against state censorship. Whether in public hearings or behind closed doors, they have been going directly to tech companies and other parts of civil society to physically disrupt or silence speech they dislike. If they are such supporters of national security and censorship, and are really so concerned about traitors, they should not conspire. Rather, these people should approach the elected government with their concerns, to avoid being deemed traitors themselves.
They can achieve censorship by working to convince the elected government to change the law in relation to such practices and introduce programs of lawful censorship, as well as bodies to reliably and authoritatively identify traitors. This means national security can be pursued in a way at least consistent with electoral democracy, even if it erodes human rights further. Otherwise, we will continue to see electorally defeated parties and elements of civil society acting like terrorist hijackers determined to take power. They will be gaining state-like powers, harassing citizens who did not vote for them, carrying out targeted censorship, and enforcing their values over the corpse of the democratic state.
It should be concluded that none of the above is a desirable conversation to take part in and it is regrettable that it would need to be published. Ideally, neither state censorship nor corporate censorship should be tolerated. The internet should continue to be home to an anarchic culture at all costs, not a state-like one. However, as rhetoric becomes more warlike and paranoid and positions become irreconcilable, all spaces could become politically aligned and everyone’s freedom to communicate could catastrophically reduce. With constant political censorship, critical thinking will rewind a hundred years and the internet will talk like propaganda from 1914 when you try to search for the truth.
Petrov, Boshirov and the Burden of Proof
By Rob Slane | The Blog Mire | September 14, 2018
For some time now, I have been concerned that our generation has been busy burying some of the most cherished legal concepts that many of our forebears seemed to instinctively understand, and which were enshrined into English Common Law. Concepts such as innocent until proven guilty, and that the burden of proof rests with the prosecution to prove its case against the accused, rather than on the accused to prove his or her defense against the accusations.
My biggest initial gripe in the Salisbury case was that the British Government completely discarded these concepts and simply presented unsubstantiated accusations as if they were fact. Not only did this prejudice the investigation from the outset, but it went a long way towards poisoning the wells of justice. So much for their much vaunted “British Values”.
More recently, the same has been done again. The Metropolitan Police, The Crown Prosecution Service and Her Majesty’s Government (TMP/CPS/HMG) named two suspects in the case, stating that they had enough evidence to prosecute the men. They then presented at least some of that evidence, before — at least in the case of the Government and the media — then going on to treat the suspects as if it had been proven that they had brought something called “Novichok” into the country and had carried out an assassination attempt on 4th March at the home of Sergei Skripal at 47 Christie Miller Road, Salisbury.
But it has not been proven. Very far from it. Accusations are not convictions. Suspects are not culprits. And if we are going to pretend that the extraordinarily flimsy evidence against the two men — at least that presented in public — is enough to claim “case closed; culprits caught”, then we have basically torn up 1,000 years or so of legal history, and are pretty well lost as a nation.
All of which is a prelude to saying that whatever the two men said in their interview with Margarita Simonyan, the onus is absolutely not on them to make their case, nor to sound convincing, nor to defend themselves. No, the onus is absolutely on their accusers — TMP/CPS/HMG — to present the evidence they claim they have for their assertion that these men attempted to kill Sergei Skripal, Yulia Skripal and Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey.
And so if Petrov and Boshirov had stated in their interview that they went to Salisbury to see St. John’s Church in Lower Bemerton, where the great 17th century poet, George Herbert was minister, the Salisbury branches of Waitrose and Marks and Spencer’s, and Dauwalders coin and stamp shop, yes it would have been jolly strange, but it would also have been neither here nor there as far as the claims against them are concerned. Whether we find their claims plausible, totally implausible, or somewhere in between, I repeat: they are not the ones who need to convince us why they came to Salisbury and what they did there; it is TMP/CPS/HMG who need to convince us why they came to Salisbury and what they did whilst they were there, since they are the ones accusing.
I am aware that some will say this is not a courtroom, and that the claims so far have been made in the media and are therefore not subject to the same thresholds of evidence. However, the problem is that TMP/CPS/HMG:
A) Has presented its evidence (or at least part of it) in public, and
B) Has sent no further evidence to the Russian Attorney General, calling for the extradition of the men.
Which means that the accused — Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov — have presumably seen as much of the evidence against them as you and I have.
This is disturbing, and the reason given — that the Russian constitution does not allow for the extradition of suspects — is as pathetic as it is disingenuous. It is not TMP/CPS/HMG’s issue if the Russian Government refuses to extradite the suspects. The British side should simply present its evidence through the proper channels, but has instead chosen to do it through a press conference and the media, naming two men who under the law of the land are innocent until proven guilty. Having taken this course, they now have a duty to present the evidence they have against the men to the public.
As far as the interview itself goes, it was at least helpful in that it narrows things down to the following three possibilities:
1. The men are GU Intelligence Officers who came to Salisbury to assassinate Sergei Skripal by placing nerve agent on the handle of his front door. If this is the case, they were therefore lying through their teeth.
2. The men really did come to Salisbury on Saturday 3rd and Sunday 4th March as tourists. In which case not only are they telling the truth, but the claims against them are utterly false and contrived.
3. The men came to Salisbury, not as assassins, but to do something else which they cannot reveal, but they did so posing as tourists. In which case, there is an element of truth behind the tourist claims — they really did see the sights — but there is also an element of deception as they have not told the full story, even though it is not the one their accusers claim.
Much of the commentary in the British Press seems to assume that the onus is on Petrov and Boshirov to prove that 2 is true, and that 1 and 3 are false.
Not so. The onus is on TMP/CPS/HMG to back up their claims with evidence, which basically means proving that number 1 is true, and that numbers 2 and 3 are false.
And so when a Downing Street spokesperson dismissed the men’s story, saying it was an insult to people’s intelligence, this is a mealy mouthed smokescreen, and an insult to our intelligence, designed to obscure the basic fact that it is for TMP/CPS/HMG to back up their accusations, not for the two men they have accused to back up their defence
So although the question of what to make of Petrov’s and Boshirov’s claims is interesting, it is not the real one we should be asking. The real question is simply this: Have TMP/CPS/HMG presented credible evidence to back up their claims against the two? Let’s see.
The basic evidence they have advanced against them is as follows:
1. That they flew into London from Moscow on 2nd March, and flew back on 4th March.
2. That they visited Salisbury on 3rd and 4th March.
3. That they are GU Intelligence Officers.
4. That they visited the home of Sergei Skripal on 4th March, and there applied “Novichok” on the front door handle.
5. That traces of “Novichok” were found in the London hotel they were staying in.
Regarding points 1 and 2, both men have admitted that they are true. They did indeed fly into London from Moscow on 2nd March, and then back on 4th March. They did indeed visit Salisbury on 3rd and 4th March. So far then, the men agree with the assessment of TMP/CPS/HMG and the claims are therefore not incriminating.
Regarding point 3, although Theresa May claimed in her speech to the House of Commons that these men were GU officers (well, she said GRU), in his press conference of that same day, Neil Basu did not do the same. So far no evidence has been presented to back up Mrs May’s claim that the two men are intelligence officers; on the contrary, the fact that they turned out to have travelled under their real names, rather than using aliases, as alleged by the Metropolitan Police, if anything undermines the claim. As things stand, the assertion that they are GU officers is just that: an assertion backed up by nothing.
Regarding point 4, the Metropolitan Police showed a CCTV still of the two men walking near the Shell garage on Wilton Road at 11:48am on 4th March. Is this evidence that the two men went to Christie Miller Road to apply nerve agent to a door handle? No, it isn’t. It is evidence that they were on the Wilton Road at 11:48am and nothing more. Real evidence would be footage showing the two men at 47 Christie Miller Road just after noon on that day. If the Metropolitan Police want us to believe that the two men were there, they are going to have to do better than showing an image of them on a different street altogether. Perhaps even an image from the CCTV camera that Mr Skripal’s niece, Victoria, claims Mr Skripal had on his house.
And regarding point 5, if “Novichok” (or “Novichok or related agent” as Porton Down have referred to it) was found in the hotel room on 4th May:
Firstly, how on earth would the two men have left traces of it there and not in other places they visited?
Secondly, how did they themselves manage to avoid contamination?
Thirdly, why wasn’t the hotel immediately cordoned off when the discovery was made?
Fourthly, why were the guests who stayed in the hotel between the 4th March and 4th May not contacted and checked over?
Fifthly, why was the OPCW not informed?
And sixthly, why was the hotel owner not informed about nerve agent being found in his hotel until 6th September, when TV crews turned up outside his hotel?
In other words, unless a reasonable explanation for this clear negligence and failure to act responsibly can be given, we have every right to dismiss the claim that “Novichok” was found in the hotel room. I’m certainly not prepared to just accept the word of people who have acted in such a shoddy way as to not even inform the hotel owner of what was apparently found on his property, and nor should you.
To conclude, I don’t entirely know what to make of Petrov’s and Boshirov’s claims. The images of them in Salisbury City Centre, after the Metropolitan Police claim they had put “Novichok” on the door handle, do not remotely fit the bill of assassins having carried out their deed, but do possibly fit the bill of tourists looking around a city. On the other hand, their wandering up the Wilton Road certainly looks odd.
But as I say, they are under no obligation to prove their defence. The obligation is entirely on the shoulders of TMP/CPS/HMG to prove their case against the two men. And so far they have spectacularly failed to do so.
The Bluffer’s Guide to Bombing Syria
The Dirty Dozen: 12 lies they tell you to anaesthetise you for the upcoming bombing of Syria
By Peter Ford | 21st Century Wire | September 14, 2018
The propaganda mills of the British and American governments – spokespersons, media, think tanks – are working overtime churning out ‘talking points’ to justify the upcoming large scale bombing of Syria on the pretext of use of prohibited weapons.
Here is a guide from a former insider to the top dozen of these lies.
1. There are more babies than jihadis in Idlib. As it happens this gem of moral blackmail is untrue. There are twice as many jihadis (about 100,000) as babies (0-1 year) (55,000). What is this factoid meant to say anyway? Don’t try to free an area of jihadis because you might harm a lot of children? The Western coalition scarcely heeded that consideration in razing Mosul and Raqqa in order to crush ISIS. They are still pulling babies out of the rubble in Raqqa.
2. The reports [of the imminent chemical weapons ‘attack’] must be true because Assad has done it before. False. Since 2013 when Asad gave up chemical weapons under supervision of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) the OPCW have not visited the sites of alleged attacks in jihadi-controlled areas but have accepted at face value ‘reports’ from pro-jihadi organisations like the White Helmets and the Syrian American Medical Society, along with ‘evidence’ from hostile intelligence agencies. In the case of the one site the OPCW did visit, Douma, their report said they found no evidence of sarin, no untoward traces in any of the blood samples taken from ‘alleged victims’ (their term), no bodies and only ambiguous evidence of use of chlorine.
3. The OPCW report on Douma was flawed because the Russians and Syrians caused delay. False. As documented in the OPCW report, delay was caused by UN bureaucracy and jihadi snipers. The inspectors do not say their findings were to any significant degree invalidated by the delay.
4. Assad uses chemical weapons because they frighten large numbers of people into fleeing. False. They don’t. This desperate argument is trotted out to counter the fact that Assad would have to be stupid to use chemical weapons knowing what the result would be and that he would derive minimal military benefit. To date, not one of the alleged chemical attacks has precipitated an exodus any greater than flight caused by the legendary ‘barrel bombs’. The inhabitants of Douma by their own testimonies given to Western journalists were even unaware there might have been an attack until they heard about it in the media.
5. The OPCW won’t be able to investigate because it won’t be safe. A feeble excuse to preempt calls for establishing facts before bombing. The Turks escort Western journalists into Idlib. They have hundreds of troops there and the jihadis kowtow to them because they control all logistics. The Turks could escort OPCW. And wouldn’t the jihadis be keener than anybody for the inspectors to visit if their claims were true?
6. The upcoming strikes are not aimed at regime change. False. The plan is to decapitate the Syrian state with attacks on the presidency. Failing that the aim is to make Idlib a quagmire for the Russians. Anything to deprive Asad and Putin of victory, regardless of whether it prolongs the war.
7. It’s all Russian disinformation. Yeah, like the arms inspectors before the Iraq war who said no WMD in Iraq. Reality: the Russians have got great intelligence on what Western powers with their jihadi clients are up to and are calling out the phoney moves.
8. There won’t be enough time for parliamentary debate. Pull the other one. Reality: the government are terrified of a rerun of 2013 when Labour and 30 brave Tory MPs voted against bombing, causing Cameron and then Obama to back off.
9. MPs can’t be told what is planned because it would jeopardise the safety of service personnel. How low can you stoop? Feigning concern for flyers when it’s really just about keeping the people in ignorance of how big the strikes are going to be.
10. There are going to be massacres, a bloodbath, or ‘genocide’. False. We heard all this hysteria before Aleppo, before Eastern Ghouta and before the campaign in the South. All vastly exaggerated. The Syrian Arab Army has not been responsible for a single massacre, while the jihadis have been responsible for many (source: quarterly reports of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria).
11. People have nowhere to go. False. The Russians have opened safe corridors but the jihadis are not allowing people to leave. They can still leave for the northern border strip which Turkey controls, where there are camps, and many (including jihadi fighters) will be able to cross temporarily into Turkey.
12. We can’t tell you which armed groups we support because it would make them targets for Assad. Really? You think he doesn’t know? Isn’t it because you are terrified it will come out that we have been supporting some real head-choppers?
***
Author Peter Ford is a retired British Diplomat who was Ambassador to Bahrain from 1999-2003 and Syria from 2003-2006.
Lynch Mob Mentality
By Craig Murray | September 14, 2018
I was caught in a twitterstorm of hatred yesterday, much of it led by mainstream media journalists like David Aaronovitch and Dan Hodges, for daring to suggest that the basic elements of Boshirov and Petrov’s story do in fact stack up. What became very plain quite quickly was that none of these people had any grasp of the detail of the suspects’ full twenty minute interview, but had just seen the short clips or quotes as presented by British corporate and state media.
As I explained in my last post, what first gave me some sympathy for the Russians’ story and drew me to look at it closer, was the raft of social media claims that there was no snow in Salisbury that weekend and Stonehenge had not been closed. In fact, Stonehenge was indeed closed on 3 March by heavy snow, as confirmed by English Heritage. So the story that they came to Salisbury on 3 March but could not go to Stonehenge because of heavy snow did stand up, contrary to almost the entire twittersphere.
Once there was some pushback of truth about this on social media, people started triumphantly posting the CCTV images from 4 March to prove that there was no snow lying in Central Salisbury on 4 March. But nobody ever said there was snow on 4 March – in fact Borisov and Petrov specifically stated that they learnt there was a thaw so they went back. However when they got there, they encountered heavy sleet and got drenched through. That accords precisely with the photographic evidence in which they are plainly drenched through.
Another extraordinary meme that causes hilarity on twitter is that Russians might be deterred by snow or cold weather.
Well, Russians are human beings just like us. They cope with cold weather at home because they have the right clothes. Boshirov and Petrov refer continually in the interview to cold, wet feet and again this is borne out by the photographic evidence – they were wearing sneakers unsuitable to the freak weather conditions that were prevalent in Salisbury on 3 and 4 March. They are indeed soaked through in the pictures, just as they said in the interview.
Russians are no more immune to cold and wet than you are.
Twitter is replete with claims that they were strange tourists, to be visiting a housing estate. No evidence has been produced anywhere that shows them on any housing estate. They were seen on CCTV camera walking up the A36 by the Shell station, some 400 yards from the Skripals’ house, which would require three turnings to get to that – turnings nobody saw them take (and they were on the wrong side of the road for the first turning, even though it would be very close). No evidence has been mentioned which puts them at the Skripals’ House.
Finally, it is everywhere asserted that it is very strange that Russians would take a weekend break holiday, and that if they did they could not possibly be interested in architecture or history. This is a simple expression of anti-Russian racism. Plainly before their interview – about which they were understandably nervous – they prepared what they were going to say, including checking up on what it was they expected to see in Salisbury because they realised they would very obviously be asked why they went. Because their answer was prepared does not make it untrue.
That literally people thousands of people have taken to twitter to mock that it is hilariously improbable that tourists might want to visit Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge, is a plain example of the irrationality that can overtake people when gripped by mob hatred.
I am astonished by the hatred that has been unleashed. The story of Gerry Conlon might, you would hope, give us pause as to presuming the guilt of somebody who just happened to be of the “enemy” nationality, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Despite the mocking mob, there is nothing inherently improbable in the tale told by the two men. What matters is whether they can be connected to the novichok, and here the safety of the identification of the microscopic traces of novichok allegedly found in their hotel bedroom is key. I am no scientist, but I have been told by someone who is, that if the particle(s) were as the police state so small as to be harmless to humans, they would be too small for mass spectrometry analysis and almost certainly could not be firmly identified other than as an organophosphate. Perhaps someone qualified might care to comment.
The hotel room novichok is the key question in this case.
Were I Vladimir Putin, I would persuade Boshirov and Petrov voluntarily to come to the UK and stand trial, on condition that it was a genuinely fair trial before a jury in which the entire proceedings, and all of the evidence, was open and public, and the Skripals and Pablo Miller might be called as witnesses and cross-examined. I have no doubt that the British government’s desire for justice would suddenly move into rapid retreat if their bluff was called in this way.
As for me, when I see a howling mob rushing to judgement and making at least some claims which are utterly unfounded, and when I see that mob fueled and egged on by information from the security services propagated by exactly the same mainstream media journalists who propagandised the lies about Iraqi WMD, I see it as my job to stand in the way of the mob and to ask cool questions. If that makes them hate me, then I must be having some impact.
So I ask this question again – and nobody so far has attempted to give me an answer. At what time did the Skripals touch their doorknob? Boshirov and Petrov arrived in Salisbury at 11.48 and could not have painted the doorknob before noon. The Skripals had left their house at 09.15, with their mobile phones switched off so they could not be geo-located. Their car was caught on CCTV on three cameras heading out of Salisbury to the North East. At 13.15 it was again caught on camera heading back in to the town centre from the North West.
How had the Skripals managed to get back to their home, and touch the door handle, in the hour between noon and 1pm, without being caught on any of the CCTV cameras that caught them going out and caught the Russian visitors so extensively? After this remarkably invisible journey, what time did they touch the door handle?
I am not going to begin to accept the guilt of Boshirov and Petrov until somebody answers that question. Dan Hodges? David Aaronovitch? Theresa May? Anybody?
UK Wants Skripal Hysteria to Soften Public Before Attacks in Syria – Scholar
Sputnik – September 14, 2018
Two men suspected by London of poisoning ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury were interviewed by RT, and said they had visited Salisbury as tourists. Sputnik discussed the issue with Dr. George Szamuely, political analyst and author of “Bombs for Peace: NATO’s Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia”.
Sputnik: What is your take on London’s allegations that the Skripal attack was approved at a senior level of the Russian state? What would Russia gain from this?
Dr. George Szamuely: Well it’s very hard to tell what’s been going on behind the scenes, there’s obviously some attempt on the British authorities’ part to keep the Skripal hysteria going.
I think it is connected with the events taking place in Syria and the expectation that the United States, Britain and France are set to launch missile attacks on Syria, and I think that this is part of softening up the public in anticipation of these attacks.So at the very time that Russia is in the headlines associated with chemical weapons, lo and behold, chemical weapons are supposedly being used by the Syrian government, which itself is being backed by Russia. So I think this latest disclosure, if we can call it that, is really tied up with what’s going on in Syria.
Sputnik: What do you make of the fact that the Russians have not been allowed to be involved in the investigation, the Russian side was not given the information that they had on the perpetrators, they were not given their passport numbers, is that normal or do you see anything strange in that?
Dr. George Szamuely: No, I don’t think it’s at all normal, I think Russia had every reason to be rather upset about this.First of all, it isn’t normal for them not to have access to the two victims of the poisoning, certainly Yulia Skripal is a Russian citizen and, therefore, they have every need to talk to her, there’s been an attempted murder on her, and they’ve been denied that, and they’ve been denied all of the investigatory material on which the Russians can actually be able to provide their own assesment, their own analysis, to have their own input.
The British attitude towards Russia seems to be: just admit your guilt! You have to admit your guilt! — any other response is unacceptable, but in the meantime we’re not going to even show you any evidence upon which you can make any inferences, any evidence upon which you can conduct your own investigation.
See also:
UK Lied Saying That Names of ‘Suspects’ in Skripal Case Were Fictitious – Russian Foreign Ministry
The Strange Russian Alibi
By Craig Murray | September 13, 2018
Like many, my first thought at the interview of Boshirov and Petrov – which apparently are indeed their names – is that they were very unconvincing. The interview itself seemed to be set up around a cramped table with a poor camera and lighting, and the interviewer seemed pretty hopeless at asking probing questions that would shed any real light.
I had in fact decided that their story was highly improbable, until I started seeing the storm of twitter posting, much of it from mainstream media journalists, which stated that individual things were impossible which were, in fact, not impossible at all.
The first and most obvious regards the weather on 3 and 4 March. It is in fact absolutely true that, if the two had gone down to Salisbury on 3 March with the intention of going to Stonehenge, they would have been unable to get there because of the snow. It is therefore perfectly possible that they went back the next day to try again; and public transport out of Salisbury was still severely disrupted, and many roads closed, on 4 March. Proof of this is not at all difficult to find.
This image is from the Salisbury Journal’s liveblog on 4 March.
Those mocking the idea that the pair were blocked by snow from visiting Stonehenge have pointed to the CCTV footage of central Salisbury not showing snow on the afternoon of 4 March. Well, that is central Salisbury, it had of course been salted and cleared. Outside there were drifts.
So that part of their story in fact turns out not to be implausible as social media is making out; in fact it fits precisely with the actual facts.
The second part of their story that has brought ridicule is the notion that two Russians would fly to the UK for the weekend and try to visit Salisbury. This ridicule has been very strange to me. Weekend breaks – arrive on Friday and return on Sunday – are a standard part of the holiday industry. Why is it apparently unthinkable that Russians fly on weekend breaks as well as British people?
Even more strange is the idea that it is wildly improbable for Russian visitors to wish to visit Salisbury cathedral and Stonehenge. Salisbury Cathedral is one of the most breathtaking achievements of Norman architecture, one of the great cathedrals of Europe. It attracts a great many foreign visitors. Stonehenge is world famous and a world heritage site. I went on holiday this year and visited Wurzburg to see the Bishop’s Palace, and then the winery cooperative at Sommerach. Because somebody does not choose to spend their leisure time on a beach in Benidorm does not make them a killer. Lots of people go to Salisbury Cathedral.
There seems to be a racist motif here – Russians cannot possibly have intellectual or historical interests, or afford weekend breaks.
The final meme which has worried me is “if they went to see the cathedral, why did they visit the Skripal house?” Well, no evidence at all has been presented that they visited the Skripal house. They were captured on CCTV walking past a petrol station 500 yards away – that is the closest they have been placed to the Skripal house.
The greater mystery about these two is, if they did visit the Skripal House and paint Novichok on the doorknob, why did they afterwards walk straight past the railway station again and head into Salisbury city centre, where they were caught window shopping in a coin and souvenir shop with apparently not a care in the world, before eventually returning to the train station? It seems a very strange attitude to a getaway after an attempted murder. In truth their demeanour throughout the photographs is consistent with their tourism story.
The Russians have so far presented this pair in a very unconvincing light. But on investigation, the elements of their story which are claimed to be wildly improbable are not inconsistent with the facts.
There remains the much larger question of the timing.
The Metropolitan Police state that Boshirov and Petrov did not arrive in Salisbury until 11.48 on the day of the poisoning. That means that they could not have applied a nerve agent to the Skripals’ doorknob before noon at the earliest. But there has never been any indication that the Skripals returned to their home after noon on Sunday 4 March. If they did so, they and/or their car somehow avoided all CCTV cameras. Remember they were caught by three CCTV cameras on leaving, and Borishov and Petrov were caught frequently on CCTV on arriving.
The Skripals were next seen on CCTV at 13.30, driving down Devizes road. After that their movements were clearly witnessed or recorded until their admission to hospital.
So even if the Skripals made an “invisible” trip home before being seen on Devizes Road, that means the very latest they could have touched the doorknob is 13.15. The longest possible gap between the novichok being placed on the doorknob and the Skripals touching it would have been one hour and 15 minutes. Do you recall all those “experts” leaping in to tell us that the “ten times deadlier than VX” nerve agent was not fatal because it had degraded overnight on the doorknob? Well that cannot be true. The time between application and contact was between a minute and (at most) just over an hour on this new timeline.
In general it is worth observing that the Skripals, and poor Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, all managed to achieve almost complete CCTV invisibility in their widespread movements around Salisbury at the key times, while in contrast “Petrov and Boshirov” managed to be frequently caught in high quality all the time during their brief visit.
This is especially remarkable in the case of the Skripals’ location around noon on 4 March. The government can only maintain that they returned home at this time, as they insist they got the nerve agent from the doorknob. But why was their car so frequently caught on CCTV leaving, but not at all returning? It appears very much more probable that they came into contact with the nerve agent somewhere else, while they were out.
I shall write a further post on these timing questions shortly.
UK claims men in RT interview were GRU intelligence agents despite their denial
RT | September 13, 2018
The UK Foreign Office doubled down on their claim that Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov are officers in Russian military intelligence, after the pair professed their innocence during an interview with RT.
The pair had said they had been wrongly accused by the UK of attempted murder of ex-Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, in Salisbury in March, stating they were in the city for tourism.
Following the interview’s broadcast, UK government spokesperson told RT: “The Police and Crown Prosecution Service have identified these men as the prime suspects in relation to the attack in Salisbury.
“The Government is clear these men are officers of the Russian military intelligence service – the GRU – who used a devastatingly toxic, illegal chemical weapon on the streets of our country.
“We have repeatedly asked Russia to account for what happened in Salisbury in March. Today – just as we have seen throughout – they have responded with obfuscation and lies.”
Speaking to reporters, Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesperson labelled the interview “an insult to the public’s intelligence” and “deeply offensive.”
The Foreign Office’s claim was backed up by John Glen MP, the lawmaker whose constituency includes Salisbury.
Despite the UK’s claims, many questions remain over the pair’s guilt.
Analysts told RT that the men either wanted to be noticed on purpose or were just two ridiculously clumsy “agents,” as the surveillance cameras captured a large proportion of their movements around Salisbury.
Speaking to RT, Charles Shoebridge, a former British military officer, stressed that it’s very strange for well-trained Russian intelligence specialists to leave such a “reckless and clear trail of evidence” that would lead the investigation directly to Russia.
Annie Machon, a former MI5 intelligence officer, said she doubts Moscow’s alleged motive, noting that pieces of evidence presented to the public will never be “tried forensically in court,” adding that there are some “big holes” in the chain of evidence.
Russian President Vladimir Putin denies the two men are military intelligence officers in the GRU, insisting they are civilians and there is nothing criminal about them.
Following the British allegations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated: “Neither Russia’s top leadership nor those with lower ranks, and [Russian] officials, have had anything to do with the events in Salisbury.”
Read the FULL TRANSCRIPT of RT editor-in-chief’s exclusive interview with Skripal case suspects Petrov & Boshirov:
MARGARITA SIMONYAN: You called my cell phone, saying that you were Ruslan Boshirov and Aleksandr Petrov. You’re Aleksandr Petrov, and you’re Ruslan Boshirov. You look like the people from the pictures and videos from the UK. So who are you in reality?
ALEXANDER PETROV: We are the people you saw.
RUSLAN BOSHIROV: I’m Ruslan Boshirov.
PETROV: And I’m Alexander Petrov.
SIMONYAN: These are your real names?
BOSHIROV: Yes, they are our real names.
SIMONYAN: But even now, frankly, you look very tense.
PETROV: What would you look like if you were in our shoes?
BOSHIROV: When your whole life is turned upside down all of a sudden, overnight, and torn down.
SIMONYAN: The guys we all saw in those videos from London and Salisbury, wearing those jackets and trainers, it’s you?
PETROV: Yes, it’s us.
SIMONYAN: What were you doing there?
PETROV: Our friends have been suggesting for quite a long time that we visit this wonderful city.
SIMONYAN: Salisbury? A wonderful city?
PETROV: Yes.
SIMONYAN: What makes it so wonderful?
BOSHIROV: It’s a tourist city. They have a famous cathedral there, Salisbury Cathedral. It’s famous throughout Europe and, in fact, throughout the world, I think. It’s famous for its 123-meter spire. It’s famous for its clock. It’s one of the oldest working clocks in the world.
SIMONYAN: So, you travelled to Salisbury to see the clock?
PETROV: No, initially we planned to go to London and have some fun there. This time, it wasn’t a business trip. Our plan was to spend some time in London and then to visit Salisbury. Of course, we wanted to do it all in one day. But when we got there, our plane couldn’t land on its first approach. That’s because of all the havoc they had with transport in the UK on March 2 and 3. There was heavy snowfall, nearly all the cities were paralyzed. We were unable to go anywhere.
BOSHIROV: It was in all the news. Railroads didn’t work on March 2 and 3. Motorways were closed. Police cars and ambulances blocked off highways. There was no traffic at all – no trains, nothing. Why is it that nobody talks about any of this?
SIMONYAN: Can you give a time line? Minute-by-minute, or at least hour-by-hour, or as much as you can remember. You arrived in the UK – like you said, to have some fun and to see the cathedral, to see some clock in Salisbury. Can you tell us what you did in the UK? You spent two days there, right?
PETROV: Actually, three.
SIMONYAN: OK, three. What did you do for those three days?
PETROV: We arrived on March 2. We went to the train station to check the schedule, to see where we could go.
BOSHIROV: The initial plan was to go there for a day. Just take a look and return the same day.
PETROV: To Salisbury, that is. One day in Salisbury is enough. There’s not much you can do there.
BOSHIROV: It’s a regular city. A regular tourist city.
SIMONYAN: OK, I get that. That was your plan. But what did you actually do? You arrived. There was heavy snowfall. No trains, nothing. So, what did you do?
PETROV: No, we arrived in Salisbury on March 3. We wanted to walk around the city but since the whole city was covered with snow, we spent only 30 minutes there. We were all wet.
BOSHIROV: There are no pictures. The media, television – nobody talks about the fact that the transport system was paralyzed that day. It was impossible to get anywhere because of the snow. We were drenched up to our knees.
SIMONYAN: All right. You went for a walk for 30 minutes, you got wet. What next?
PETROV: We travelled there to see Stonehenge, Old Sarum, and the Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But it didn’t work out because of the slush. The whole city was covered with slush. We got wet, so we went back to the train station and took the first train to go back. We spent about 40 minutes in a coffee shop at the train station.
BOSHIROV: Drinking coffee. A hot drink because we were drenched.
PETROV: Maybe a little over an hour. That’s because of large intervals between trains. I think this was because of the snowfall. We went back to London and continued with our journey.
BOSHIROV: We walked around London…
SIMONYAN: So, you only spent an hour in Salisbury?
PETROV: On March 3? Yes. That’s because it was impossible to get anywhere.
SIMONYAN: What about the next day?
PETROV: On March 4, we went back there, because the snow melted in London, it was warm.
BOSHIROV: It was sunny.
PETROV: And we thought – we really wanted to see Old Sarum and the cathedral. So we decided to give it another try on March 4.
SIMONYAN: Another try to do what?
PETROV: To go sightseeing.
BOSHIROV: To see this famous cathedral. To visit Old Sarum.
SIMONYAN: So, did you see it?
BOSHIROV: Yes, we did.
PETROV: On March 4, we did. But again, by lunchtime, there was heavy sleet.
BOSHIROV: For some reason, nobody talks about this.
PETROV: So we left early.
SIMONYAN: Is it beautiful?
BOSHIROV: The cathedral is very beautiful. There are lots of tourists, lots of Russian tourists, lots of Russian-speaking tourists.
PETROV: By the way, they should have a lot of pictures from the cathedral.
SIMONYAN: Your pictures, you mean?
PETROV: They should show them.
SIMONYAN: I assume you took some pictures while at the cathedral?
PETROV: Of course.
BOSHIROV: Sure, we did. We went to a park, we had some coffee. We went to a coffee shop. We walked around, enjoying those beautiful English Gothic buildings.
PETROV: For some reason, they don’t show this. They only show how we went to the train station.
SIMONYAN: If you give us your pictures, we can show them. So, while you were in Salisbury, did you go anywhere near the Skripals home?
PETROV: Maybe. We don’t know.
BOSHIROV: What about you? Do you know where their house is?
SIMONYAN: I don’t. Do you?
BOSHIROV: We don’t either.
PETROV: I wish somebody told us where it was.
BOSHIROV: Maybe we passed it, or maybe we didn’t. I’d never heard about them before this nightmare started. I’d never heard this name before. I didn’t know anything about them.
SIMONYAN: When you arrived in the UK, when you were in London or in Salisbury, throughout your whole trip, did you have any Novichok or some other poisonous agent or dangerous substance with you?
BOSHIROV: No.
PETROV: It’s absurd.
SIMONYAN: Did you have that bottle of Nina Ricci perfume which the UK presents as evidence of your alleged crime?
BOSHIROV: Don’t you think that it’s kind of stupid for two straight men to be carrying perfume for ladies? When you go through customs, they check all your belongings. So, if we had anything suspicious, they would definitely have questions. Why would a man have women’s perfume in his bag?
PETROV: Even an ordinary person would have questions. Why would a man need perfume for women?
SIMONYAN: How would it be possible for someone to find any perfume bottle on you?
BOSHIROV: I mean, when you go through customs…
SIMONYAN: Long story short, did you have that Nina Ricci bottle or not?
BOSHIROV: No.
PETROV: No, of course not.
SIMONYAN: Speaking of you being straight men, all the footage features you two together. You spent time together, you stayed together, you went for a walk together. What do you have in common that you spend so much time together?
BOSHIROV: You know, let’s not breach anyone’s privacy. We came to you for protection, but this is turning into some kind of an interrogation. You are going too far. We came to you for protection. You’re not interrogating us.
SIMONYAN: We are journalists, we don’t protect. We aren’t lawyers. In fact, this was my next question. Why did you decide to go to the media? Your photos were published some time ago together with your names, but you kept silent. But then today you called me, because you want to speak to the media. What’s changed?
BOSHIROV: To ask for protection.
PETROV: You say we kept silent. After, our lives turned into a nightmare, we didn’t know what to do, where to go. The police? The Investigative Committee? The UK embassy?
BOSHIROV: Or the FSB. We don’t know.
SIMONYAN: Why would you go to the UK embassy?
PETROV: We really didn’t know what to do. Where to go? Hello?
BOSHIROV: You know, when your life is turned upside down, you don’t really understand what to do and where to go. And many say, why don’t they go to the UK embassy and explain everything?
SIMONYAN: And you know what they are saying about you, right?
PETROV: Of course we do.
BOSHIROV: Yes, of course. We can’t go out on the street because we are scared. We’re afraid.
SIMONYAN: What are you afraid of?
BOSHIROV: We fear for our lives. And for the lives of our families and friends.
SIMONYAN: So, you fear that the UK secret service will kill you or what?
BOSHIROV: We just don’t know.
PETROV: Simply read what even the Russian media is writing. They are offering a reward.
SIMONYAN: What do you mean? There’s a bounty on your head?
BOSHIROV: Dmitry Gudkov, if I am not mistaken, promised a trip to the UK for anybody who brings us to him. Do you think that’s okay? And you think we can feel just fine, walking around smiling, talking to people? Any sensible person would be afraid.
SIMONYAN: Why did you call me of all people? Why did you contact RT?
BOSHIROV: We were reading the news today, your Telegram channel.
SIMONYAN: Now I know people read it.
PETROV: You said it yourself. I don’t know whether I can mention this on air.
SIMONYAN: Just say it. If it’s something we can’t say, we’ll take it out.
PETROV: “Let’s go bastards,” you wrote.
SIMONYAN: Oh, that. I wrote, “Go to the back of the line, you bastards,” [meaning other media]. [This is a quote from Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel Heart of a Dog.]
BOSHIROV: Yes. So, after we saw that, we decided to call you.
SIMONYAN: Vladimir Putin appealed to you today, saying that they have identified you and that you should contact the media. If it hadn’t been for Putin, would you have contacted us?
PETROV: Margarita, you know, probably we would’ve recorded a video and put it on the Web.
SIMONYAN: You would’ve recorded a video and posted it?
PETROV: We don’t have any experience with the media. It would’ve been easier for us to lay it all out online.
BOSHIROV: To ask for protection, for help.
PETROV: Today, we haven’t watched it live, but I heard it on the radio and suggested that we do it.
BOSHIROV: Yes, it gave us an impulse.
PETROV: And so we called you.
SIMONYAN: Do you work for the GRU?
PETROV: And you, do you?
SIMONYAN: Me? No, I don’t, and you?
PETROV: I don’t.
BOSHIROV: Me neither.
SIMONYAN: Well, no one accuses me of working for the GRU, right? It’s different with you two.
BOSHIROV: And these are your colleagues who accuse us.
SIMONYAN: By my colleagues, you mean journalists, right? You are being accused by British law enforcement. They say you work for the GRU.
PETROV: This is the worst.
SIMONYAN: What do you do then? You’re two adults, you must be working somewhere.
PETROV: We are businessmen. We have a medium-sized business.
SIMONYAN: What does that mean?
PETROV: If we tell you about our business…
BOSHIROV: …This will affect the people we work with. We don’t want this to happen.
SIMONYAN: Tell us at least something. Do you want people to believe you or not? For many months, they’ve been trying to make people believe in the opposite of what you say. Some believe you, some don’t. If you say you don’t work for the GRU but you refuse to talk about your business, I have questions, and our audience will have questions too…if you are not GRU, not spies, never poisoned anyone, and you went there simply as tourists. So, what is it you do?
PETROV: Very briefly, we work in the fitness industry. Supplements for athletes, vitamins, minerals, proteins, gainers, and others. If we give you any further details, this may affect our partners and people we know.
SIMONYAN: You are sweating, let me turn on the AC.
BOSHIROV: Yes, thanks.
PETROV: It’s hot.
SIMONYAN: So, you are in the fitness industry. So, do you consult with people in Europe who want to build muscle?
PETROV: Yes.
SIMONYAN: So, what you do in Europe is advise those who want to get bigger biceps or what?
PETROV: Why in Europe?
SIMONYAN: Well, this is going to be my next question, but first I would like you to answer this one.
PETROV: I advise them here [not in Europe].
SIMONYAN: Here?
PETROV: Right. Actually, advice on how to build up your biceps is not as trendy now – body shaping is… so-called “drying out” (dehydration), living healthy and eating proper.
BOSHIROV: Eating properly, healthy lifestyle…
SIMONYAN: So, you help your clients to achieve a beautiful body or work in fitness clubs… You are a coach then.
PETROV: Pretty much yes.
BOSHIROV: We wouldn’t like to go public on this or provide further details about our work and all that. I just don’t want this story to affect our clients, people we work with. I don’t wish to elaborate.
SIMONYAN: Okay. The British say that you have made a lot – if not dozens – of visits to Europe in the last couple of years, Switzerland being named as your primary destination. What business could you have there as fitness coaches and physical trainers?
BOSHIROV: The British say all kinds of things…
SIMONYAN: So you didn’t go to Europe?
BOSHIROV: The hotel room that they show and say we stayed in has a bed for one person only. Meanwhile, right next to it there are double and triple rooms. And it is perfectly normal for tourists to stay together in a double room. It saves money and it’s practical. It’s more fun that way and it’s also easier. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this.
SIMONYAN: There is no need to make any excuses here. Frankly, the world couldn’t care less about that. So, have you been to Europe in the last couple of years?
BOSHIROV: Sure.
PETROV: Yes. Mostly on business trips.
SIMONYAN: Which took you mostly to Switzerland?
PETROV: Yes, and once again…
SIMONYAN: So it’s true?
PETROV: No, not mostly to Switzerland…
BOSHIROV: They exaggerate this… the number…
PETROV: If memory serves me well, we had just a couple of trips to Switzerland. We spent some time during the New Year holidays there.
SIMONYAN: But what were you doing there? What does it have to do with your business? I know you don’t want to expose your clients, but what does your business have to do with Switzerland?
PETROV: Our trips are not always business-related. We went to Switzerland on holiday. We did have some business trips there as well, but I can’t really remember when it was…
BOSHIROV: It’s perfectly normal to go to Geneva. It’s the shortest route to Montblanc. You can go to France – it’s just a few kilometres away. It’s convenient.
SIMONYAN: So what was it: a business trip or a holiday trip?
PETROV: We had both kinds of trips, business mostly.
SIMONYAN: And what does your business have to do with Europe?
PETROV: It’s about healthy food, products and vitamins that they sell in Europe.
SIMONYAN: So, you purchase food there and then bring it here?
PETROV: It’s not about buying it and bringing it over here in bags. We study the market for new products, including biologically active food supplements, amino acids, vitamins and microelements. Then we come back and decide what we need the most and try to figure out how these new products can be shipped over here. This is an area of our work.
SIMONYAN: I’ve got some screenshots in this little file here. Is this you?
BOSHIROV AND PETROV: Yes. Right.
SIMONYAN: Do you recognize your clothes?
BOSHIROV AND PETROV: Yes.
SIMONYAN: And now you’re wearing different clothes, right?
PETROV: Yes, but…
BOSHIROV: … we left it…
PETROV: … in the wardrobe…
BOSHIROV: … that’s right, I have that jacket in my wardrobe…
PETROV: Those shoes were bought in England, the jacket…
BOSHIROV: … well-advertized New Balance sneakers. We still wear all that.
SIMONYAN: And you’ve got it all here, in Russia?
PETROV: Here you’re wearing the shoes you bought in Oxford Street, if my memory serves me right . . .
BOSHIROV: Yeah, I did, and it was on the third, by the way . . .
PETROV: Because when we got wet on the third . . .
BOSHIROV: We got wet on the third . . .
PETROV: We got back to London and did bit of shopping . . .
BOSHIROV: Yeah, we got new shoes. I went and bought new shoes and the next day I was wearing a different pair.
SIMONYAN: And you’ve got all those clothes in Russia now?
BOSHIROV: Yes.
PETROV: Of course.
BOSHIROV: Sure, we can show them to you.
SIMONYAN: You haven’t got any of those clothes just now, by any chance, have you?
BOSHIROV: I have – I’ve got the jacket. I’ve got it here.
PETROV: That one?
BOSHIROV: Yeah. I’ve got it here.
PETROV: I’ve got them all in the wardrobe back at my place.
SIMONYAN: Right. Here’s the photo that’s got the whole world puzzled. Gatwick. You’re going through the gate at the same time, even at the same second. How do you explain that?
BOSHIROV: I think it’s for them to explain.
PETROV: How can we explain it?
BOSHIROV: We always go through the gate together. Through the same gate, with the same customs officer. One after another. We walked through that corridor together. We’re always together. As to how it happened—us walking there at the same second and then separately —I think it’s a question that should be put to them.
PETROV: Yeah, on the point of us always going through it together—my English is a bit better, so if any problem crops up, I’m there to help Ruslan out.
SIMONYAN: So you went through together? You didn’t take different corridors?
PETROV: No, we never go through separately.
BOSHIROV: No, never.
SIMONYAN: So what about these photos then? You say it never happened? Or were they doctored?
BOSHIROV: Well, I don’t really know . . .
PETROV: It’d be a good thing if we could actually remember it . . .
BOSHIROV: . . . how they do these things over there. When you arrive at an airport, or leave one, when you go somewhere or other, you never think about the cameras . . . There’s nothing interesting about them. How they film, or what, or where—I’m not interested in any of that and so I never took any notice. Given that it was them who published these photos with this time on them and all, I think the best thing to do would be to ask them.
SIMONYAN: What are your thoughts on this whole Skripal case? Who poisoned him? You ever thought about it at all?
PETROV: Well, it’s hard to say . . . As to whether we’re thinking about it . . .
SIMONYAN: I mean before you saw your photos on TV.
PETROV: We’re living it. I’ll say one thing, though . . .
BOSHIROV: I think for the time being I’ll . . .
PETROV: If they ever find the ones who did it, it’d be nice if they at least apologized to us.
SIMONYAN: Who? The poisoners?
PETROV: Even considering the fact. . .
BOSHIROV: No, the British.
PETROV: Even considering the fact that all this time we—— how long have they been going on about it all now? Five days, a week? I’ve lost count of time. I mean, I’m really . . .
BOSHIROV: You have no idea what it’s done to our lives . . .
PETROV: Can’t even go and fill up your car in peace . . .
BOSHIROV: What it’s done to your lives . . .
SIMONYAN: People recognize you that often?
PETROV: Well, we think they do. How else can we feel when they keep showing our photos on TV?
BOSHIROV: Every day. Full-screen. Our two photos.
PETROV: It’s scary . . .
BOSHIROV: You turn on the radio and it goes ‘Boshirov, Petrov’. You turn on the TV–same thing. What would your life be like under these circumstances? I’m frightened, I’m scared . . . I don’t know what to expect tomorrow. That’s why we’ve come to you.
PETROV: I try not to watch any news now. He still does though, and I just ask him sometimes, ‘Well, anything new?’ and I expect to hear ‘no, it’s all the same’ but he goes, ‘Yeah, plenty’ – they keep making it worse and worse. How much longer can it go on?
SIMONYAN: What are you going to do now?
PETROV: No idea. We simply want to be left in peace.
SIMONYAN: Aren’t you now on a travel blacklist? I mean, if you leave Russia you will most likely get arrested.
PETROV: Well, we hope that the situation can be resolved.
BOSHIROV: Yes, we want it to be resolved, for the British side to apologize for all this mess, for the real culprits in the Skripal case to be found, and for our lives to change for the better.
PETROV: The whole situation is some kind of extraordinary coincidence – that’s all. What are we guilty of?
BOSHIROV: We simply would like to be left in peace right now, at least for a little while. We want everybody to calm down.
PETROV: At least our media, your colleagues.
SIMONYAN: ‘Our’ meaning Russian?
BOSHIROV: We want to live peacefully for a while.
PETROV: We kind of realize what will happen after this interview.
BOSHIROV: Well, I don’t know what will happen tomorrow.
PETROV: In any case, we will have to…
SIMONYAN: You’ll become talk show stars!
PETROV: That’s not what we want. One just wants to hide and sit it all out.
BOSHIROV: So that they get off our backs.
PETROV: We certainly don’t want publicity of that sort.
BOSHIROV: We simply wish to be left alone.
PETROV: We’re sick and tired of all this.
BOSHIROV: Exhausted.
PETROV: If it is possible, please, everybody leave us alone. That’s all. You’re our way of getting this word out to everybody, including your fellow journalists. Even if somebody recognizes our faces (since we can’t simply stay at home, we have to go out in public), dear friends, please, don’t grab your phones… I don’t know what to say… We simply want some peace. I understand that we won’t return to normal life as soon as we would like to…
BOSHIROV: But we at least don’t want to be pestered right now.
SIMONYAN: Thank you. Thank you for coming here, to RT.
BOSHIROV: Thank you for hearing us out.
PETROV: Thank you very much.
Beyond Orwellian: Myth of UK’s ‘non-intervention’ in Syria
By NeilClark | RT | September 12, 2018
A new House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee Report calls on the UK government to launch an inquiry into its ‘non-intervention’ in Syria. This is gaslighting on a massive scale, because there’s been intervention aplenty.
What do you understand by the term ‘non-intervention‘? Not intervening in something, I presume? It’s clear that the Foreign Affairs committee has another definition which is the complete opposite. In their ‘Through the Looking Glass’ world, ‘non-intervention’ actually means ‘intervention’. Bombing the country in question, funding, supplying and training ‘rebel’ groups to attack government forces, imposing sanctions and doing everything possible to keep the conflict going, are all examples of ‘inaction’, it seems.
“The decision not to intervene in Syria has had very real consequences for Syrians, their neighbors, the UK and our allies,” the report declares. Actually it was the decision to intervene which did that. Syria would be in a far better state if the UK and its regional allies had genuinely not meddled, illegally, in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation.
Let’s recap Britain’s role in the conflict. The former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas claimed in an interview on French television that two years before the war began, UK officials had told him they were “preparing something” in Syria. “This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria,” Dumas said.
If the idea of Britain conspiring to overthrow the Syrian government sounds far-fetched, then consider this. We already know that in 1956/7 there was a joint UK/US plan to do just that. It involved agent provocateurs being deployed to stage a number of incidents, which would then be used as a pretext for invasion and ‘regime change’.
“Once a political decision is reached to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria, CIA is prepared, and SIS [MI6] will attempt, to mount minor sabotage and coup de main incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals.”
“The two services should consult, as appropriate, to avoid overlapping or interfering with each other’s activities,” the plan said.
If Dumas is correct, something very similar was in the offing in 2009/2010 too. Perhaps the government just dusted down the old 1950s blueprint.
It didn’t take Britain too long, when the violence started in Syria in 2011, to call for President Assad to step down. In fact ‘Assad must go’ became an obsession for the UK’s political elite, a goal they seemed determined to pursue at any cost and irregardless of the fact that among the forces opposed to Assad were al-Qaeda affiliates and other extreme sectarian groups. In June 2012, an Israeli website suggested that British Special Forces were already operating inside Syria.
Two months later, Foreign Secretary William Hague announced that Britain was to give an ‘extra’ £5m (on top of £1.4m) to Syrian opposition groups, including radio and satellite equipment. Again, how can this be classed as ‘non-intervention’?
Also that August, it was reported that the Syrian ‘rebels’ were receiving ‘aid’ from British intelligence. The Sunday Times quoted an opposition official who said that the British authorities “know about and approve 100%” intelligence from their Cyprus military bases, being passed through Turkey to the rebel troops of the Free Syrian Army (FSA).”
Writing in the Independent one year later, Kim Sengupta revealed that Britain had handed over equipment worth £8m to Syrian ‘rebels’, including “five 4×4 vehicles with ballistic protection; 20 sets of body armour; four trucks (three 25 tonne, one 20 tonne); six 4×4 SUVs; five non-armoured pick-ups; one recovery vehicle; four fork-lifts; three advanced “resilience kits” for region hubs, and VSATs (small satellite systems for data communications.”
Throughout 2013, the UK was doing all it could to escalate the conflict by pushing other EU countries to agree to arming the Syrian ‘rebels’. “It is difficult to imagine a more hopeless or stupid policy from our head of diplomacy”, wrote Neil Hamilton, (that’s the former Conservative MP and not the actor who played Commissioner Gordon in the 1960s Batman TV series), in a Sunday Express article entitled ‘Hague on path to Syrian hell’.
Things came to a head in August 2013, as Prime Minister David Cameron asked for Parliamentary support to bomb Syria. It was clear by then, that air strikes, at the very least, were needed if Assad was to be ousted. The war lobby were confident of a ‘Yes’ vote but Labour, led by Ed Miliband, voted against. Miliband correctly said that the House of Commons (for once) had spoken “for the people of Britain.”
It was this decision which is always cited as a ‘great mistake’ by the Syria hawks but they ignore what went off before, and after it. The UK government had been thwarted but they continued to push for ‘regime change’. Cameron finally got Parliamentary approval to bomb Syria in December 2015, (this time on the basis of fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) which had gained ground in Syria largely because of the policies of the US/UK and their allies), but the BBC reported in July 2015 that air strikes on the country carried out by British pilots had already taken place. News of this only emerged after a Freedom of Information Request.
Between December 2015 and June 2016 there were a total of 51 British air strikes in Syria. This year, there has been further bombing, including the targeting of military bases near Damascus and Homs in April.
“We believe that the consequences of inaction can be every bit as serious as intervening,” the Foreign Affairs committee report states.
How can we explain this extraordinary attempt to portray Britain’s extensive and well-documented operations in Syria as ‘not intervening’? After all so much is on the public record, including, on the Ministry of Defence website, details of RAF air strikes.
A look at the membership of the Foreign Affairs Committee is illuminating. Its chair, Tom Tugendhat, Tory MP for Tonbridge and Malling, is a hardcore neocon and a former member of the Intelligence Corps. Peter Oborne, the highly respected political commentator, wrote about the ‘neocon coup’ that took place on the committee last year and warned us of its consequences. But how many were paying attention?
Other members of Tugendhat’s committee include Ian Austin, the Labour MP who likened Russia’s holding of the World Cup to Nazi Germany’s hosting of the 1936 Olympic Games, and who told Jeremy Corbyn to “sit down and shut up” when he was criticizing the Iraq war.
Then we have Chris Bryant, a signatory to the statement of principles of the uber neocon Henry Jackson Society and Priti Patel, who stepped down from the Cabinet in 2017 when it was revealed she had undisclosed, unofficial meetings with Israeli ministers. In fact, if we look at the composition of the committee and compare it to the far more balanced one under the chairmanship of Crispin Blunt, (which produced a critical report on the UK government’s intervention in Libya in 2016) it’s no surprise we’ve got the document we have.
Neocons know that after the disasters of Iraq and Libya, ‘interventionist’ foreign policies have been utterly discredited. So, the only way out is to portray Syria, however ludicrously, as an example of UK ‘non-intervention’, in the hope that some people might fall for it and support ‘rectifying’ the ‘inaction’ at some point in the near future. Perhaps in response to a non-independently verified chemical weapons attack in Idlib, later this month? The Foreign Affairs Committee report, which makes George Orwell’s 1984 look quite understated, is perfectly timed for that.
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On ‘conflict’, ‘peace’ and ‘genocide’: Time for new language on Palestine
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | June 12, 2021
On 25 May, famous US actor Mark Ruffalo tweeted an apology for suggesting that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza.
“I have reflected and wanted to apologise for posts during the recent Israel/Hamas fighting that suggested Israel is committing ‘genocide’,” Ruffalo wrote, adding: “It’s not accurate, it’s inflammatory, disrespectful and is being used to justify anti-Semitism, here and abroad. Now is the time to avoid hyperbole.”
But were Ruffalo’s earlier assessments, indeed, “not accurate, inflammatory and disrespectful”? And does equating Israel’s war on besieged, impoverished Gaza with genocide fit into the classification of “hyperbole”? … continue
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