“That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Thus spake Karl Rove, Deputy Chief of Staff in the Government of George W. Bush.
I do wish people would study Rove’s words more carefully. Judiciously study them. If they did, then whenever the next alleged atrocity occurs and the United States, together with its coalition of supine vassals, starts yelling and hollering 10 minutes later for action to be taken, on the basis of a test-tube full of washing powder, or pictures of injured women and children in a war zone, and the entire media of dutiful stenographers shrieks that “something must be done”, then perhaps we might pause and wonder if we are being played. Instead of falling into an emotional spasm, maybe we would instead reject the deafening drumbeats of war – wars that have a habit of killing immeasurably more women and children than the alleged incidents on which they are based, by the way — and ask ourselves whether “Rove’s Law” has come into play.
As an aside, the West’s interventionist wars remind me of that wonderfully cynical exchange in the film, The Man With Two Brains:
Dr. Hfuhruhurr: “The only time we doctors should accept death is when it’s caused by our own incompetence!”
Dr. Necessiter: “Nonsense! If the murder of twelve innocent people can help save one human life, it will have been worth it!”
Here’s Dr. Necessiter selling us into war in Iraq: “Nonsense! If it costs us the deaths of 500,000 people to topple the evil dictator Saddam Hussein, it will have been worth it!”
Here he is selling us bombs on Libya: “Nonsense! If turning Libya into a failed state, a terrorist’s playground, and causing a mass exodus of refugees is the price for getting rid of Gaddafi, it will have been worth it.”
And here’s Dr Necessiter again, this time trying to sell us into bombing Syria: “Nonsense! Risking a catastrophic clash with a country armed with thousands of nuclear weapons is worth it in order to respond to the alleged deaths of less than a hundred people in a totally unproven chemical weapons attack.”
Behold, the “logic” of the interventionists!
But back to Rove. What was he saying? Three things:
Number one: We – that is the Globalist Deep State, centred in Washington DC – are sovereign over the entire globe and we will do as we please.
Number two: That we don’t follow reality, we create it.
Number three: That we are prepared to do things that will make your jaws drop, your hair stand on end, and your eyes boggle as you wonder what is going on, and while your jaws, your hair and your eyes are busy doing their thing, we will have moved on to create our next reality.
In other words – we are God – and not a kind and merciful God, but a God who lords it over all peoples’, nations and tongues, who tells lies, and then tells more lies to cover up those lies and – when you poor saps are trying to work out what it is we’re really up to – before you know what has happened, those lies and those lies to cover up lies will have become the new reality. We’ll have moved on and the world with it, and the narrative we have created will have been written in the history books, which we ourselves shall write.
The cases of Sergei Skripal and the alleged chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta seem somehow to represent the zenith of this ideology.
I do not know who poisoned Sergei Skripal or for what reason. It could be that the Russian Government was behind it, although this would mean accepting the highly improbable thesis that they decided to target a has-been MI6 spy, who they released from prison eight years ago, using perhaps the dumbest assassination method in the history of the world – an ineffective, slow-operating, “military-grade” nerve agent, which could be traced back to them, and which they smeared on a door handle in rainy Salisbury –, a week or so before a Presidential election, and less than 100 days before they are due to host the World Cup. In other words, the official narrative does not rest on accepting that the Russian state is the epitome of pure evil; it rests on accepting that it is the epitome of insanity and bumbling incompetence.
I do not know what happened in Eastern Ghouta. It could be that the Syrian Government was behind what is alleged to have happened (if it indeed did happen), but this would mean having to accept the thesis that just 24 hours away from completely liberating the last pocket of resistance in Damascus, after the US, the UK and France had all warned that they would attack if chemical weapons were used, just a week or so after the US President, Donald J. Swamp, announced that the US would be pulling out of Syria (which they occupied illegally, by the way), they made the decision to use a weapon that gave them no military advantage whatsoever, but which was practically guaranteed to be used as a pretext for airstrikes against them. In other words, like the Skripal case, the theory does not stand on accepting that the Syrian state is the epitome of pure evil; it stands on accepting that it is the epitome of self-defeating stupidity on an epic scale.
But you see what I’ve done? I’ve fallen right into Karl Rove’s trap, haven’t I? I’m asking questions about whether the narratives in these cases stack up. In the Skripal case, I’ve been judiciously studying reality by asking lots of questions that ought to have occurred to anyone with a keen interest in arriving at the truth (here and here, for instance). I could do the same with the Syrian case, if I had the time.
Yet while I’m doing so, the narrative is moving on. I’m falling into exactly the trap that Karl and his disciples have laid. They want two sorts of people: those who just blindly accept that it was the Russians wot did it, or that it was Assad wot did it; and those who spend their time asking questions about the official explanations. The first group call the second group conspiracy theorists and nutters. The second group call the first group dumb sheeple. And the Globalist Deep State laughs and laughs and laughs as the two groups battle it out to make sense of what has happened, leaving it free to march on to create the next reality. Truly I tell you, these Bolsheviks have learnt their Hegelian Dialectics well.
Now, this is not to rule out that in the Salisbury and Eastern Ghouta cases the official narratives might – just might – be the correct ones. That both Vladimir Putin and Bashar Assad might be the Laurel and Hardy of Geopolitics. Yet it has to be said that whatever else you think about them, neither of them tends to come across in interviews as being what you might call dumb or inept. Nor do either of them give the impression that they have sudden insane impulses to do things which have absolutely no benefit to them, but which hand their enemies massive PR victories.
But this is beside the point. The point is not whether these particular incidents are what the official narrative says they are, or whether they are provocations. It suffices for the “new reality creators” to create their realities on occasion, or perhaps to distort occurrences which they didn’t create, and before you know it you have your two groups battling over events which may be real or fake: the conspiracists – who are studying every event to try to work out the details and the inconsistencies – and the sheeple – who believe that their Government is full of good hearted, white hatted chaps and lasses who would never, ever do anything bad – unlike those orcs over in Mordor.
Rove and Co have basically created a “reality” where truth is no longer discernible, where assertions of guilt are taken as fact, and where holes in these kinds of incidents only serve to divide the people further, so that the Globalist Deep State can move on to create their next reality.
But let’s not get gloomy. The good news is that although they clearly think they can get away with it indefinitely, they can’t. No kingdom or empire built on a mountain of lies can stand indefinitely. They all fall. And can’t you start to sense the signs that the empire’s “new realities” – or what are known as lies in laymen’s terms – are reaching boiling point? Don’t you sense that they have just got too confident and in doing so have begun to get careless? They are making mistakes. And as they do, they are having to resort to bigger and bigger lies to cover up the ones they’ve already told.
Sadly for Rove and Co, but happily for the rest of us, the world doesn’t actually work the way they think it does. Reality — I mean real reality, rather than the phony reality they have created — will catch up sooner or later. I sense that it’s on its way even now. And when it finally comes, the whole rotten edifice that these “history’s actors” have tried to create will crash and burn. Bringing much rejoicing.
April 13, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | Syria, UK, United States |
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The ever excellent Campaign Against the Arms Trade is back in the English High Court again today in its continuing attempts to ban arms sales to Saudi Arabia. It is against UK law to sell arms to a country which is likely to use them in breach of international humanitarian law, and that Saudi Arabia consistently and regularly uses British weapons to bomb schools, hospitals and civilians is indisputable.
Unfortunately the courts are an instrument of power and control for the 1%, not an impartial resort for justice, so I fear CAAT will not succeed despite the fact their case is undeniably correct.
Part of the British Government’s defence is the close military support it gives to Saudi Arabia, which it claims minimises civilian deaths (it plainly does no such thing). Thousands of children have died in the Yemeni war, most killed by the Saudis and their allies. These war crimes have been documented by the United Nations despite concerted UK and US diplomacy at the UN aimed at downplaying the Saudi crimes. Cluster bombs, white phosphorous and other illegal weapons have frequently been used.
Yemeni dead children very seldom make in into the mainstream media, whereas Syrian children do. But not all Syrian children – those children killed by the jihadist head-choppers the West and its Saudi allies have armed, funded and “advised” do not make the corporate and state media either. Only children allegedly – and the word needs repeating, allegedly – gassed by the Syrian armed forces are apparently worth our attention.
If we really attack because we care about the children, we would be attacking Saudi Arabia to halt its atrocities in Yemen. Instead we are allying with Saudi Arabia – the child killers, UK military support to whom is today being stressed in the High Court – to attack Syria.
Anybody who believes this is anything to do with “humanitarian intervention” is a complete fool.
April 13, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Saudi Arabia, UK, Yemen |
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The world is being pushed to the brink of catastrophic war. US President Trump and his French and British counterparts are threatening to launch military strikes on Syria in the coming days.
Donald Trump has bragged about “smart” missiles coming. French President Emmanuel Macron says “we will strike at a time of our choosing”. Who are these madmen? What right have they to threaten world peace?
It could be all just bravado, but even the mere use of threat is completely intolerable and criminal.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has warned that any such action will precipitate a region-wide war. With Saudi Arabia and Israel saying that they will join in the actions of the above NATO trio to attack Syria, Assad’s warning of mayhem is a grimly accurate prognosis.
Iran has said it will defend its ally Syria if it comes under attack. Russia has also given notice that any US-led intervention will be responded to with force. We are thus on the cusp of an explosive war if the US and its allies proceed with their threats to launch military strikes. The risk of a devastating escalation is a clear and present danger.
American, French and British warships and warplanes are converging in the East Mediterranean within striking distance of Syria.
Russia has beseeched the NATO powers to come to their senses and back off from their war plans.
France’s President Macron says that he does not want an escalation of violence. Macron is either cynical or deluded. If the NATO powers follow through with their threats to launch strikes on Syria, then escalation is almost inevitable.
Lest we forget, the US, France and Britain are already acting illegally by their past four years of “low-level” bombing of Syria. A case can be made that the governments of these three NATO powers are already in breach of international law from their aerial bombing campaigns in Syria. Regardless of their hollow claims of fighting terrorism in that country, they stand accused of war crimes. The American destruction of the Syrian city of Raqqa last year with thousands of casualties is sufficient evidence of massive criminality.
Then there is the incontrovertible evidence that the US, Britain and France have for the past seven years covertly ransacked Syria with their clandestine support of terrorist proxies – the very groups whom they mendaciously claim to be fighting against.
The Syrian war has been all about a criminal covert war for regime change, orchestrated and fomented by the US and its allies. The fact that the terror proxies for regime change have been defeated by the Syrian army along with its allies Russia, Iran and Hezbollah is being distorted by Western media propaganda. Instead of acknowledging this historic victory, Western governments are rushing to create a pretext for direct intervention.
This week sees the Syrian army and Russia finally recapturing the last bastion of the Western-backed terror proxies in the Eastern Ghouta suburb near the capital Damascus. The war is over, or should be over. But the US and its allies are pushing for a last-ditch excuse to launch a full-on war against Syria.
And if these powers do proceed with their strike plan, it is on the back of an outrageous false-flag provocation involving alleged chemical weapons.
The UN inspectors have not even begun to carry out their investigation into what happened last weekend in Eastern Ghouta where the last-remaining terrorist groups claimed that Syrian government forces carried out a chemical weapons attack on civilians. There is no evidence of such an attack, except for videos of very dubious provenance sourced from the terror groups.
Syrian and Russian forces say there is no evidence of a chemical attack. Red Crescent medics on the ground have also said there is no evidence. The entire episode is a dubious claim sourced from dubious sources and given the usual Western media saturated, unverified coverage.
France’s Macron upped the ante this week, stating that he has “proof” that chemical weapons were used by the Syrian “regime”. Macron is recklessly raising the stakes for a joint military attack on Syria by the US, Britain and France.
But where is Macron’s “proof”. He doesn’t show any. This is typical of the illegal conduct of Western governments who make sensational claims without any substantiation. If the Syrian and Russian authorities are correct in their assessment, then Macon is a deluded liar.
The French leader – who has plenty of political woes at home with nationwide industrial strikes – is said to be goading Trump to take military action.
For the past two decades, the US, British and French have been on a bombing spree around the world, killing millions of innocents in their Neo-imperialist intrigues. The Middle East and Africa has been devastated from their illegal wars.
Yemen, to mention just one country, is being subjected to a genocidal war in which millions of children are starving from a barbaric blockade of that country by Saudi Arabia, armed and fuelled by the US, Britain and France. Yemen is a monumental war crime. And yet, grotesquely, the world is told by the war-criminal governments of the US, Britain and France that they are going to bomb Syria to “protect civilians” on the back of a lie.
World peace is being threatened by despicable rogue regimes that are telling lies with sanctimonious smirks.
Russia is right to hold firm. The rogue regimes of the US, Britain and France must not be allowed to hold the world hostage with their rampant state-sponsored terrorism. The Western powers like to talk about “red lines”. They have crossed many red lines already with the blood of millions splattered over the globe. Bombing Syria is a final red line.
Facing down Western aggression in Syria is only the beginning. The Western public must follow up by bringing their war criminals in high office to justice.
April 13, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | France, Iran, Middle East, Syria, UK, United States |
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The UK appears to be pursuing a policy of “destroying evidence” in the case of the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal, the Russian envoy to the UK said during a press conference on Friday.
The accusation came from Alexander Yakovenko, as he was updating the media on the developments in the Salisbury poisoning case. He reiterated Russia’s dismay over the British government’s refusal to allow Russian diplomats access to Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who was also poisoned, saying that from Moscow’s point of view, the two Russian nationals appear to have been abducted by the British authorities.
The ambassador said London’s approach to the high-profile case followed a pattern of crimes, in which the UK chose to classify details from the public and ignore Russia’s request to disclose them.
The latest such case is the death of Russian businessman Nikolay Glushkov on March 12, after the apparent attack on the Skripals, Yakovenko said.
He confirmed Russia’s receipt on Thursday of a classified report from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which the organization sent after confirming Britain’s identification of a toxic agent used in the poisoning. Yakovenko said Moscow is studying it carefully and will make its opinion public when ready. He stressed that Russia’s criticism of the way the UK chose to engage the OPCW in the case did not amount to doubting the merits of the report.
The Russian diplomat also commented on the situation in Syria and Britain’s possible military action there. He advised the UK against taking rash steps in Syria based on a fabricated chemical weapons attack last Saturday, saying it would be similar to the misguided intervention in Iraq in 2003.
He briefed journalists on the latest development in Douma, a town in the suburbs of Damascus, where the alleged attack took place and where Russian military police have been deployed on Thursday. He suggested that the media compared the situation in Douma, which is relatively undamaged after its capture by the Syrian government forces, to that in the city of Raqqa, which was practically obliterated by the US-led coalition and its allies on the ground last year, when they took the city from the jihadist group Islamic State.
April 13, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism | Russia, Syria, UK |
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The word “Russia” does not occur in today’s OPCW report. The OPCW Report says nothing whatsoever about the origin of the chemical which poisoned the Skripals and certainly does not link it in any way to Russia.
The technical ability of Porton Down to identify a chemical has never been in doubt, and the only “finding of the United Kingdom”the OPCW has confirmed is the identity of the chemical.
10. The results of analysis by the OPCW designated laboratories of environmental and
biomedical samples collected by the OPCW team confirm the findings of the United
Kingdom relating to the identity of the toxic chemical that was used in Salisbury and
severely injured three people.
11. The TAV team notes that the toxic chemical was of high purity. The latter is
concluded from the almost complete absence of impurities.
There are scores of countries that chemical could have come from. For the BBC and other mainstream media outlets to pretend that the OPCW has in any sense endorsed Boris Johnson’s claims about Russia is to spread deliberate lies as propaganda. In fact what they have confirmed is simply the finding of Porton Down – and that finding was that it is a chemical which cannot be confirmed as made in Russia.
April 12, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | UK |
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Only the Russians have allowed us to hear the actual voice of Yulia Skripal, in that recorded conversation with her cousin. So the one thing we know for certain is that, at the very first opportunity she had, she called back to her cousin in Russia to let her know what is going on. If you can recall, until the Russians released that phone call, the British authorities were still telling lies that Sergei was in a coma and Yulia herself in a serious condition.
We do not know how Yulia got to make the call. Having myself been admitted unconscious to hospital on several occasions, each time when I came to I found my mobile phone in my bedside cabinet. Yulia’s mobile phone plainly had been removed from her and not returned. Nor had she been given an official one – she specifically told her cousin that she could not call her back on that phone as she had it temporarily. The British government could have given her one to keep on which she could be called back, had they wished to help her.
The most probable explanation is that Yulia persuaded somebody else in the hospital to lend her a phone, without British officials realising. That would explain why the first instinct of the British state and its lackey media was to doubt the authenticity of the call. It would explain why she was able to contradict the official narrative on their health, and why she couldn’t get a return call. It would, more importantly, explain why her family has not been able to hear her voice since. Nor has anybody else.
It strikes me as inherently improbable that, when Yulia called her cousin as her first act the very moment she was able, she would now issue a formal statement through Scotland Yard forbidding her cousin to be in touch or visit. I simply do not believe this British Police statement:
“I was discharged from Salisbury District Hospital on the 9th April 2018. I was treated there with obvious clinical expertise and with such kindness, that I have found I missed the staff immediately.
“I have left my father in their care, and he is still seriously ill. I too am still suffering with the effects of the nerve agent used against us.
“I find myself in a totally different life than the ordinary one I left just over a month ago, and I am seeking to come to terms with my prospects, whilst also recovering from this attack on me.
“I have specially trained officers available to me, who are helping to take care of me and to explain the investigative processes that are being undertaken. I have access to friends and family, and I have been made aware of my specific contacts at the Russian Embassy who have kindly offered me their assistance in any way they can. At the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services, but, if I change my mind I know how to contact them.
“Most importantly, I am safe and feeling better as time goes by, but I am not yet strong enough to give a full interview to the media, as I one day hope to do. Until that time, I want to stress that no one speaks for me, or for my father, but ourselves. I thank my cousin Viktoria for her concern for us, but ask that she does not visit me or try to contact me for the time being. Her opinions and assertions are not mine and they are not my father’s.
“For the moment I do not wish to speak to the press or the media, and ask for their understanding and patience whilst I try to come to terms with my current situation.”
There is also the very serious question of the language it is written in. Yulia Skripal lived part of her childhood in the UK and speaks good English. But the above statement is in a particular type of formal, official English of a high level which only comes from a certain kind of native speaker.
“At the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services” – wrote no native Russian speaker, ever.
Nor are the rhythms or idioms such as would in any way indicate a translation from Russian. Take “I thank my cousin Viktoria for her concern for us, but ask that she does not visit me or try to contact me for the time being. Her opinions and assertions are not mine and they are not my father’s.” Not only is this incredibly cold given her first impulse was to phone her cousin, the language is just wrong. It is not the English Yulia would write and it is awkward to translate into Russian, thus not a natural translation from it.
To put it plainly, as someone who has much experience of it, the English of the statement is precisely the English of an official in the UK security services and precisely not the English of somebody like Yulia Skripal or of a natural translation from Russian.
Yulia is, of course, in protective custody “for her own safety”. At the very best, she is being psychologically force-fed the story about the evil Russian government attempting to poison her with the doorknob, and she is being kept totally isolated from any influence that may reinforce any doubts she feels as to that story. There are much worse alternatives involving threat or the safety of her father. But even at the most benevolent reading of the British authorities’ actions, Yulia Skripal is being kept incommunicado, and under duress.
April 12, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism | Human rights, UK |
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The leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, says members of parliament (MPs) should decide if British Prime Minister Theresa May can join the United States in any military action against Syria in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack.
Corbyn, a veteran anti-war campaigner, also demanded a political process for ending the war in Syria and preventing an escalation of the crisis.
US President Donald Trump has warned of imminent military action in Syria in response to the suspected chemical attack near Damascus on Saturday.
“Parliament should always be given a say on military action,” Corbyn told the BBC on Wednesday when asked about Syria.
“Obviously the situation is very serious, obviously there has to be, now, a demand for a political process to end the war in Syria. We cannot risk an escalation even further than it’s gone already.”
Corbyn also said countries involved should get around a negotiating table to find an end to the civil war by political means.
“What happened last weekend was terrible. What we don’t want is bombardment which leads to escalation and leads to a hot war between Russia and America over the skies of Syria,” he said.
May is considering joining the United States in any military action in Syria.
The British premier is not bound by law to seek parliamentary approval for offensive military action, but many now believe lawmakers should always have a vote before the government takes military action.
On Wednesday May accused Syrian authorities of carrying out the alleged chemical attack, and said she was working with allies on how to hold those responsible to account.
Damascus, in a statement released late on Saturday, strongly rejected the allegation of using chemical munitions and said that the so-called Jaish al-Islam Takfiri terrorist group was repeating the false reports.
The Iranian and Russian governments have also rejected the accusations. Russia and Iran have warned against any US military action against the Syrian government.
April 12, 2018
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism, Militarism | Jeremy Corbyn, Syria, Theresa May, UK |
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The statement released by UK police on behalf of Yulia Skripal appears to be designed to cut her off from outside contact, the Russian Embassy in the UK says. The mission is calling for verification that the statement is genuine.
Scotland Yard earlier issued a statement that was apparently from Yulia Skripal, the daughter of former double agent Sergei Skripal, who are both recovering from poisoning in the UK. British authorities have been accusing Moscow of poisoning the Skripals since day one of the case, allegations that Moscow firmly denies.
“If everything mentioned there is true we cannot but congratulate our compatriot,” the Russian Embassy said in reaction to the Yulia Skripal statement, which it dubbed “an interesting read.”
The embassy then called for verification that the words attributed to Yulia were indeed her own. “With no possibility to verify it, the publication by the Metropolitan Police raises new questions rather than gives answers,” the embassy’s message said. “As before, we would like to make sure that the statement really belongs to Yulia. So far, we doubt it much.”
The statement, in which Yulia Skripal refuses the proffered assistance of the Russian Embassy and asks her cousin Viktoria to avoid trying to contact her, seems to have been “composed in a special way so as to support official statements made by British authorities and at the same time to exclude every possibility of Yulia’s contacts with the outer world – consuls, journalists and even relatives,” the embassy said.
The part where the statement released by the Met Police talks about Yulia having “access to friends and family” has also raised questions. Yulia’s closest relatives, according to the embassy, are her cousin Viktoria and her grandmother Elena, Sergei Skripal’s mother, who live together. Seeing as how Yulia is refusing contacts with Viktoria, it is unclear what family the statement speaks of.
“Particularly amazing is the phrase ‘no one speaks for me’ appearing in a statement which, instead of being read on camera by Yulia herself, is published at Scotland Yard website,” the embassy said. The original statement also says Yulia is “not yet strong enough to give a full interview to the media.”
Before the London police released Yulia Skripal’s supposed statement, reports suggested that she had been moved to a secure, undisclosed location, “thought to be a well-guarded country house.” The Russian diplomatic mission then voiced worry that she was being “held hostage” – which was not alleviated by the release of the official statement.
“To sum up, the document only strengthens suspicions that we are dealing with a forcible isolation of the Russian citizen. If British authorities are interested in assuring the public that this is not the case, they must urgently provide tangible evidence that Yulia is alright and not deprived of her freedom,” the embassy said.
Yulia Skripal and her father had spent several weeks in a coma following their poisoning on March 4 in the city of Salisbury, where Sergei lived after being exchanged in a spy swap in 2010. Yulia and Sergei only recently woke up, though, according to the statement attributed to Yulia, both are still “suffering with the effects of the nerve agent used against us.”
April 12, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception | UK, Yulia Skripal |
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The United Nations Security Council turned down a compromise resolution on Syria, proposed by Sweden and seconded by Russia seeking investigation on the alleged chemical attack in Douma. Five countries supported the resolution with two permanent members – United States and Britain – opposing it. Earlier, a resolution on the same lines which was supported by Russia and China was also opposed by the US and Britain.
This is a significant political and diplomatic victory for Russia insofar as only two other countries joined the US and Britain to oppose the Swedish resolution. Six countries abstained.
The big question is whether this development portends an impending US attack on Syria, bypassing the UN. The UN has refused to confirm there has been any attack at all. Russia and Syrian government insist there has been no attack and have approached the Organization for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for an international investigation. The good thing is that the OPCW is deputing two teams of experts to go to Douma later this week. Russia has offered to give them full security protection.
So Trump has a major decision to make. Logically, punishment follows a crime that has been committed and it seems no crime has been committed. This appears to be a false flag operation – that is, a fabrication with a view to trigger a sequence of events. That was how the US invaded Iraq in 2003 and it is an established fact today that Saddam Hussein did not have any program to develop weapons of mass destruction, as then US Secretary of State Colin Power had misled the UN Security Council. (Powell later admitted that he was misled by his own administration.)
One difference in the present case is that Trump has been on record that he wants the American military presence in Syria to end. That stance and the present threat to launch an attack on Syria are contradictory. Because, a US attack on Syria will have serious repercussions, including possibly a showdown with Russia, which would mean a US drawdown in Syria may not be possible in a conceivable future.
Perhaps, Trump is indulging in doublespeak and the backdrop could be the criticality that has arisen over Robert Mueller’s investigation into his collusion with Russia, which has now dramatically expanded in scope. The FBI raid on the office of Trump’s attorney in the White House is a very serious development. Trump is just inches away from being implicated in the charges against him levelled by porn star Stormy Daniels. CNN says, “There could be dark and unprecedented times ahead.”
A US attack on Syria can distract attention from the stormy controversy that may arise if at this point Trump axes Mueller and derails the investigation against him. There are precedents when beleaguered American presidents resorted to diversionary tactic. Bill Clinton fired cruise missiles at Kandahar when the scandal over Monica Lewinsky peaked and he was facing the prospect of impeachment.
That brings us back to the alleged chemical attack in Douma last weekend. Who would have staged a false flag operation? The finger of suspicion points toward Israel’s role. Israel is desperately keen that the US should have a permanent military presence in Syria. To that end, Israel is fuelling tensions that will take matters to a point that a US withdrawal from Syria somehow gets stalled. This is also the impression conveyed by DebkaFile, the Israeli website with links to the intelligence services, which specializes in disinformation tactics.
The coincidental Israeli attack on a Syrian air base on Sunday had all the hallmarks of a deliberate act of provocation. Four Iranian military advisors were killed in the Israeli raid. Israel must be hoping against hope that the Iranians will retaliate, leading to a flare-up where the US would get pitted against Iran at some point. Such subterfuges are typical of Israel’s strategy. The point is, Israel lacks the capacity on its own to tackle the challenge of the expanding Iranian influence in next-door Syria.
Trump has reportedly cancelled a planned trip to Latin America. The New York Times has reported that Trump is weighing “more robust” military strikes against Syria. No doubt, tensions are rising. To my mind, however, Trump may not order an attack on Syria. Maybe it’s wishful thinking — frankly, I am a man of peace and am terrified of war — but I’ll explain why there is reason to believe still that sanity will ultimately prevail in Washington.
First, a US attack on the Syrian regime at this stage of the 7-year old war doesn’t make sense insofar as it cannot stop President Bashar Al-Assad on his tracks from attaining total victory. Bashar’s victory is a fait accompli. Period.
On the other hand, in order for the Syrian regime to be degraded to a point — like in Libya for example — and deposed from power, there has to be a massive western military intervention, including deployment of ground forces in tens of thousands. That seems improbable, given the level of disenchantment in Europe regarding Trump. So, the US has to go alone — at best with the (British) poodle. In such an enterprise, what does US hope to gain? Again, the chaos that follows will be beyond imagination.
Indeed, the risk of escalation is exceedingly high and that is not in the interests of Trump’s ‘America First’. By the way, hey, what about the “trade war” with China? What about the meet with Kim Jong Un? What about Afghanistan? What about Yemen? Above all, will another Middle Eastern war go down well in the US opinion? Will the US Congress support an attack on Syria when American interests are not directly facing threat?
Finally, the US cannot afford to overlook the explicit – and repeated – Russian warnings at various levels that an American attack on Syria will have grave consequences. Trump would know Vladimir Putin is “smart” and means business when he says something to the effect that Russia will ensure that what happened in Libya does not repeat. (TASS )
However, the Syrian conflict is approaching yet another new flashpoint. Make no mistake, Israel will have to pay a price for the killing of the Iranian 4 military advisors. The powerful Iranian statesman, Ali Akbar Velayati has has explicitly stated as much. Indeed, Israel is going to be in real fix if Trump now decides not to attack Syria.
April 11, 2018
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism, Wars for Israel | Iran, Israel, Russia, Sweden, Syria, UK, United States |
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There’s no arguing that recently we’ve witnessed an abrupt increase of public interest in chemical weapons and the top-secret British laboratory Porton Down due to the alleged poisoning of Sergei Skripal in the so-called Salisbury incident.
Back in 2004, the Guardian would announce that this laboratory had conducted experiments on people using weaponized chemical agents, including highly volatile ones.
In this regard, it must be recalled that the United Kingdom began using chemical weapons almost immediately after the invention of this weapon. England would unleash deadly chemical attacks during the First World War, only to take advantage of the experience it accumulated of the process to utilize mustard gas against Arab insurgents in the 1920s. Moreover, historic documents show that London had an intention of using chemical agents against Germany’s densely populated cities during the Second World War.
The First World War was the time when the UK created the top-secret Porton Down chemical weapons laboratory. Over the course of its existence, more than 20,000 people were subjects of thousands of chemical and biological agents, as well as all sorts of drugs. According to various estimates, at least 8,000 people were exposed to the effect of mustard gas, and more than 3,000 people to sarin nerve gas poisoning. A renowned British historian Ulf Schmidt would explore the story of “survivors of Porton Down” in his book “Secret Science: A Century of Poison Warfare.”
By 1918, a quarter of all English shells would contain poisonous substances – phosgene, diphosgene, mustard, and chloropicrin, bringing the total amount of chemical weapons that British troops had at their disposal to 25,400 tons. In 1919, the British Royal Air Force in a bid to suppress the Bolsheviks in northern regions of Russia would unload diphenylchloroarsine on their heads, a highly toxic substance that causes severe suffocation.
In 1920, Winston Churchill ordered the suppression of Muslim uprisings in Iraq with the help of mustard gas. Some analysts still remember the phrase he used in a secret memorandum :
I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes…
As a consequence, Iraqi villages populated by “uncivilized” people that dared to revolt against the British Empire were wiped out with the use of mustard gas. Seventy years after these events, the survivors said that their villages were bombed three times a day. In addition to mustard gas, British troops would also deploy napalm against peaceful Iraqis along with new types of high-explosive and phosphorous bombs.
From 1930 to 1940, Britain tested the effect of mustard gas on Indian soldiers. Later these inhumane tests were dubbed “Rawalpindi experiments”, even though the area referred to in this name is now a part of the Punjab province in Pakistan. The purpose of these “experiments” was to study the effects and establish the dosages of mustard gas that could be used in combat operations. In the course of these “experiments” Indian soldiers were locked in gas chambers and then poisoned with mustard gas. After 10 years of continuous torture of Indian soldiers hundreds suffered from the consequence of severe exposure to mustard gas.
In 1942, the British developed the so-called Operation Vegetarian. They planned to scatter linseed cakes infected with anthrax spores over German pastures. The UK “baked” over 5 millions of such cakes for the attack. However, before launching it the UK decided to test their effectiveness on the Scottish Gruinard Island, the anthrax exposure was so “successful” that until 1990 any access to the island was strictly forbidden, but even today the consequences of this “experiment” haven’t been studied.
From 1939 to 1989, the United Kingdom was engaged in the development and research of new chemical warfare agents which became a pivotal part of the work done at the Porton Down chemical weapons laboratory. It was experts from this same laboratory that had subjected Indian soldiers to mustard gas exposure in the 1930s.
However, the tests of chemical agents on people within the confinements of Porton Down wasn’t something out of the ordinary. According to the El Pais newspaper, in 1963 this research center decided to test how vulnerable public infrastructure was to chemical and biological attacks. To do this, they unleashed an unknown bacteria in the London Underground, that was originally considered harmless, but later turned out to be capable of causing sepsis. However, no one was held responsible for such inhumane “research”.
One can also recall the experiments conducted in 1963 that studied the effect of LSD drugs on British soldiers.
There’s been hundreds of former subjects of such “chemical experiments” that have demanded London to tell the truth about what is happening behind the closed doors of Porton Down, and to compensate for the harm inflicted by such “experiments”. In 2008, British authorities recognized individual facts of all sorts of harmful incidents and issued compensations to 359 of nearly 22,000 soldiers who were subjected to tests at Porton Down.
Recently, the British Medical Association (BMA) has released a report on the use of drugs as weapons, after examining the ongoing militarization of drugs. This has been a matter of grave public concern for decades now, but the highly technical nature of the above mentioned report has been kept out of the public eye.
It’s curious that according to various reports, the US Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency has been funding a number of military projects performed by the chemical weapons laboratory of Porton Down. Among them: experimental respiratory infection with Anthrax, Ebola virus, Marburg virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, Western equine encephalitis virus, and Eastern equine encephalitis virus.
As for the latest reports about British chemical projects, it’s noteworthy that last year Syrian armed forces came across ISIS warehouses filled with weaponized chemical substances produced by the US and UK. Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad would announce that the poisonous substances found at the said warehouses were produced by such American and British companies as Federal Laboratories, Cherming Defense UK and NonLethal Technologies. According to his reports, Syrian soldiers retrieved hand grenades and grenade launchers filled with CS and CN toxins. Such warehouses were located in the liberated city of Aleppo and the eastern suburb of Damascus.
But, in addition to the documented use of chemical weapons, Britain is well known for its false-flag provocations in this field. Among them is the so-called White Helmets organization in Syria. When Britain needs to blame Russia, Iran or the Syrian armed forces for the ongoing bombing of allegedly peaceful international radical terrorists, it orders them to destroy hospitals and schools, while using alleged chemical weapons in the process before carrying out “rescue operations” under direct supervision of British special services. Injured children are always on hand as props, with professional cameramen capturing the staged events. It is noteworthy that the founder of this group was James Le Mesurier, a British military intelligence officer with an impressive track record. He’s a graduate of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, who saw deployment in some well-known military operations, including in Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. In general, he’s been everywhere the West needed to stage a humanitarian catastrophe, with a subsequent “humanitarian intervention” leading to long sought after Western geopolitical objectives. He is still in the service of Her Majesty, to be more specific – British military intelligence.
So, after a careful examination of the role chemical weapons play in the operations ordered by the UK, including false-flag attacks, everything becomes clear. Therefore, there can hardly be any doubts about the responsibility of British special services in the staging of the Salisbury incident which was designed to be yet another anti-Russian provocation, just as false-flag Syrian attacks have been.
It is unlikely that in this regard, Britain and its ruling political elite will be able to publicly refute the facts mentioned above in any way.
April 11, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | ISIS, Syria, UK |
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The ratcheting up of warlike rhetoric from the UK government has been increasingly welcomed by interventionists in the media establishment. Though the prospect of military action in Syria looks likely, dissenting voices remain.
Since UK Prime Minister Theresa May refused to rule out military action in Syria as a response to the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, a formerly rebel-held suburb of Damascus, there has been a fervent hawkish clamor from the usual suspects across the media establishment.
Guardian journalist Simon Tisdall has written an op-ed piece titled, ‘After Douma, the west’s response to Syria’s regime must be military,’ in which he calls for military action to proceed before an OPCW investigation into the incident.
According to Tisdall, the culprits behind the supposed chemical attack are obvious: the Syrian government and its ally, Russia. “Calls to wait for yet another UN investigation amount to irresponsible obfuscation. Only the Syrian regime and its Russian backers have the assets and the motivation to launch such merciless attacks on civilian targets.”
In a reaction that wouldn’t be out of place in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War, Tisdall concludes: “Allied military intervention, better late than never, is necessary to avoid future atrocities, [and] spare innocent lives.”
In turn, right-wing UK broadsheet the Telegraph pleads for the UK not to be left on the periphery if the US and France decide to take military action in Syria. Its editorial concludes: “If America and France are to act, Mrs May needs to ensure that the UK is not left on the sidelines unwilling to join in the punitive action she has rightly identified as necessary.”
Political commentators on Twitter such as Mark Curtis are not so convinced military intervention is the solution to the Syrian conflict: “Maybe Iran should strike Tel Aviv to halt atrocities in Gaza? Moscow to strike Riyadh to stop Saudi atrocities in Yemen? How about Jordan striking Ankara to stop atrocities in Afrin?”
The Mail Online’s Peter Hitchens – in a blog article titled ‘The Guns of April : Are we in a pre-War era, right now?’ – suggests that those such as himself who oppose military action are seen as betraying their country in favor of foreign, enemy powers. Hitchens writes: “This is an invariable symptom of a country whose elite is bent on war.”
Simon Jenkins, a colleague of Tisdall’s at the Guardian, shares the view that Assad is responsible for chemical weapons violations in his own country. However, he insists bombing Syria is not the solution, saying: “For the moment, western military intervention is utterly pointless. We must kick the habit of trying to rule the world.” This, perhaps, is a nod to Britain’s colonial past that some in government want to resurrect to help reassert itself on the global stage.
In Jenkins’ concluding remarks, he highlights the hypocrisy of nations such as the US when it comes to the laws of war: “The laws of war are enveloped in hypocrisy, largely because they are written by the winners. The US has still not signed the convention against delayed-action cluster bombs, one of the most immoral weapons ever devised.”
The drumbeat of war is increasingly being sounded among the political and media hawks. The question is, will this translate into something more tangible? The ‘dissenters’ will be hoping it does not.
April 10, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Simon Tisdall, Syria, The Guardian, UK |
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Skripalgate is the latest chapter in Russiagate
At least since the time of Marcus Tullius Cicero in the late Roman Republic everyone has certainly understood that politicians lie all the time. To be sure, President Donald Trump has been exceptional in that he has followed through on some of the promises he made in his campaign, insisting periodically that he has to do what he said he would do. Unfortunately, those choices he has made to demonstrate his accountability to his supporters have been terrible, including moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, threatening to end the Iran nuclear agreement and building a wall along the Mexican border. Following through on some other pledges has been less consistent. He has increased U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan and turned the war over to the generals while also faltering in his promise to improve relations with Russia. The potential breakthrough offered by promising exchanges during phone calls to Vladimir Putin have been negated by subsequent threats, sanctions and expulsions to satisfy hysterical congressmen and the media.
Concerning Syria, Trump last Tuesday said “I want to get out,” promising to pull U.S. troops out very soon, but was quickly brought to heel by pressure from Congress and a phone call from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that compelled him to change his mind within 24 hours. Israel wants chaos in Syria and its instrument of choice is the American military. Netanyahu has Congress to do his bidding and, for whatever reason, appears to also have Trump under his thumb.
So Donald Trump turns out to be a pretty good liar, even if one has to take into account the fact that he frequently has no idea what he is talking about. But the prize for lying at a high level has to go to the British as related to what has been going on both in the Middle East, with Russia, and also in Britain itself. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair was the first master at dissimulation in 2002 when his intelligence chief Sir Richard Dearlove told him that the Bush White House had decided on war and “the intelligence and facts were being around the policy” regarding Iraq, meaning that it was ignoring the information that did not support its desire to create a pretext for invading the country and removing Saddam Hussein. Blair presumably could have derailed the ill-fated invasion by refusing to go along with the venture, which was a war crime, but instead he fully supported George W. Bush in the attack and thereby had a hand in America’s worst foreign policy disaster ever. In 2016 an official British government inquiry determined that Bush and Blair had indeed together rushed to war. The Global Establishment has nevertheless rewarded Tony Blair for his loyalty with Clintonesque generosity. He has enjoyed a number of well-paid sinecures and is now worth in excess of $100 million.
Moving along to the present, we have Prime Minister Theresa May. May has been in serious trouble, politically speaking. After losses suffered in the recent parliamentary elections, she is clinging to power and is increasingly unpopular even within her own Conservative Party. So what do you do when you are in trouble at home? You create a foreign crisis that you have to deal with. If you are someone as venal as former American President and bottom feeder Bill Clinton you accomplish that end by firing off a few cruise missiles at a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan and at some mud huts in Afghanistan. If you are Theresa May, you up the ante considerably, coming up with a powerful enemy who is threatening you, enabling you to appear both resolute and strong in confronting a formidable foe. That is precisely what we have been seeing over the past month relating to the alleged poisoning of former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
There is quite a bit that is odd about the Skripal case. Even the increasingly neoconnish Guardian newspaper has conceded that “the British case [against Russia] has so far relied more heavily in public on circumstantial evidence and secret intelligence.” And secret intelligence, so called, has all too often been the last refuge of a scoundrel whenever a government is selling snake oil to the public. In this case, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson rushed to judgement on Russia less than forty-eight hours after the Skripals were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury England, too soon for any chemical analysis of the alleged poisoning to have taken place.
Theresa May addressed Parliament shortly thereafter to blame the Kremlin and demand a Russian official response to the event in 36 hours, even though she had to prevaricate significantly, saying that the apparent poisoning was “very likely” caused by a made-in-Russia nerve agent referred to by its generic name Novichok. She nevertheless rallied the backbenchers in Parliament, who responded with a lot of hearty “Hear! Hear!” endorsements. When Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn attempted to slow the express train down by suggesting that it might be wise to wait in see what the police investigation uncovered, he was hooted down. The British media was soon on board with a vengeance, spreading the government line that such a highly sensitive operation would require the approval of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin himself. The expulsion of Russian diplomats soon followed.
One of the strangest aspects of the Skripal case is what is going on now that daughter Yulia will soon be out of the hospital and Sergei is no longer in critical condition. A cousin Viktoria Skripal has offered to fly in from Moscow to provide support for her family, but it is believed that she will not be able to receive a visa from the British. Russian television aired a recording of a phone call between the two cousins in which Yulia said that she was disoriented but improving and that neither she nor her father had suffered permanent damage from the poisoning. The call ended abruptly and Viktoria Skripal believes that it was scripted by the British government on a controlled phone line.
Repeated requests by Russia to obtain a sample of the alleged nerve agent for testing have been rejected by the British government in spite of the fact that a military grade nerve agent would have surely killed both the Skripals as well as anyone else within 100 yards. As the latest British account of the location of the alleged poison places it on the door handle of the Scripals’ residence, the timetable element is also unconvincing. That means that the two would have spent three hours, including a stop at a pub and lunch, before succumbing on a park bench. Military grade nerve agents kill instantly.
A request to have the testing done by the politically neutral Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is in progress, but there is little enthusiasm from the British side, which does not want a Russian observer to participate in the process. The May government has already established its own narrative and certainly would have plenty to hide if the whole affair turns out to be fabricated. And fabricated it might have been as the nerve agent, if it actually exists, could have been manufactured almost anywhere.
The head of Britain’s own chemical weapons facility Porton Down has contradicted claims made by May, Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, and British Ambassador in Moscow Laurie Bristow. The lab’s Chief Executive Gary Aitkenhead has testified that he does not know if the nerve agent was actually produced in Russia, a not surprising observation as the chemical formula was revealed to the public in a scientific paper in 1992 and there are an estimated twenty countries capable of producing it. There are also possible stocks of Novichok remaining in independent countries that once were part of the Soviet Union, to include Russia’s enemy du jour Ukraine, while a false flag operation by the British themselves, the CIA or Mossad, is not unthinkable.
The resort to official Orwellian govspeak by the British is remarkable throughout the process, but is particularly painful reading regarding the treatment of the Skripals’ pets, two guinea pigs and a cat. A spokesman for the Department of the Environment reported that “The property in Wiltshire was sealed as part of the police investigation. When a vet was able to access the property, two guinea pigs had sadly died. A cat was also found in a distressed state and a decision was taken by a veterinary surgeon to euthanize the animal to alleviate its suffering. This decision was taken in the best interests of the animal and its welfare.”
So the presence of squadrons of technicians and cops in the residence did not permit anyone to take a minute to feed the cat and guinea pigs. And the cat was killed as a purely humanitarian gesture – it’s “best interest” was apparently to die. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Finally, the best argument against the British government’s evasions about what took place in Salisbury on March 4th remains the question of motive. So the British would have one believe that Vladimir Putin personally ordered the killing of a former British double agent who had been released from a Kremlin prison in a spy swap and who was no longer capable of doing any damage to Russia. He did that in spite of the fact that he had an election coming up and would be the host of the World Cup in the summer, an event that he would want to go smoothly. So he deliberately shot himself in the foot on both counts, allegedly because he wanted to send a message to traitors and also because just can’t help himself since he is a vindictive KGB type whose impulses are pure evil. Does that make sense to the reader? It doesn’t to me.
April 10, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Syria, UK, United States |
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