[ingliz]

the handiwork of the Russian FSB?

The recipe is freely available online and, if you only need a gramme of material, a bright undergraduate can make it in the university teaching lab. But, off the bat, the UK government is insisting that Russia must be the culprit.

Why?

[skinster]

I'm curious, has any journalist actually asked Theresa May or any other members of the government who are levelling accusations against Russia - a) what is the evidence linking this alleged attack to Russia and b) why won't you produce it?

As has already been stated, most of the MSM is in on this whole charade. A lot of alternative media journalists - AKA actual journalists - are raising questions and being ignored by the mainstream, as is to be expected.

Anyone who believes this shit has got to be a moron. There's no other way to say this, sorry.

[ingliz]

So much for this scary Russian 'novichok' being ten times more potent than VX.

The condition of Yulia Skripal, who was poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury along with her father, is improving rapidly, doctors have said.

[Potemkin]

So much for this scary Russian 'novichok' being ten times more potent than VX.

The FSB won't be happy with their chemist....

[Heisenberg]

As has already been stated, most of the MSM is in on this whole charade. A lot of alternative media journalists - AKA actual journalists - are raising questions and being ignored by the mainstream, as is to be expected.

Anyone who believes this shit has got to be a moron. There's no other way to say this, sorry.

I doubt any mainstream journalists are "in on" anything in the sense that they are actively part of a conspiracy.

The truth is that political journalists are generally a very incurious bunch who are far too close to their sources to be any use. They'll repeat the government line on this, not out of any real active agenda, but because they're too lazy to do their jobs properly.

[Atlantis]

So much for this scary Russian 'novichok' being ten times more potent than VX.

We only know about the Novichoks from exiled Soviet scientists who used their knowledge (or the actual weapons) to make money in the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Their testimony cannot necessarily be trusted because they are motivated by greed and/or hatred for Putin.

According to one testimony, people die within 30 seconds of exposure to Novichoks. If the poison was applied to the Skripal's door, they shouldn't have been alive when they were finally treated hours later. If Novichoks were indeed involved, this suggests that the poison had lost its potency. The organophosphates used lose about 10% of their potency after a year's storage. If this Novichok was part of a batch from a Soviet lab which has been sold on the black market in the 90s, it would have lost most of its potency and would explain why the Skripals are still alive today.

This also suggests that the perpetrators are exiled anti-Putin oligarchs or dissidents who acted with or without the knowledge/consent of Western intelligence services. A state operator would have had access to a newly made batch of Novichoks.

[skinster]

The truth is that political journalists are generally a very incurious bunch who are far too close to their sources to be any use. They'll repeat the government line on this, not out of any real active agenda, but because they're too lazy to do their jobs properly.

I wouldn't say they're lazy, but that they know they'll keep their cushy jobs if they parrot the party line.

There's no need to consider conspiracies here, besides like...the OP.

[foxdemon]

We only know about the Novichoks from exiled Soviet scientists who used their knowledge (or the actual weapons) to make money in the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Their testimony cannot necessarily be trusted because they are motivated by greed and/or hatred for Putin.

According to one testimony, people die within 30 seconds of exposure to Novichoks. If the poison was applied to the Skripal's door, they shouldn't have been alive when they were finally treated hours later. If Novichoks were indeed involved, this suggests that the poison had lost its potency. The organophosphates used lose about 10% of their potency after a year's storage. If this Novichok was part of a batch from a Soviet lab which has been sold on the black market in the 90s, it would have lost most of its potency and would explain why the Skripals are still alive today.

This also suggests that the perpetrators are exiled anti-Putin oligarchs or dissidents who acted with or without the knowledge/consent of Western intelligence services. A state operator would have had access to a newly made batch of Novichoks.

Still working on your spy novels, I see.


Putin is the obvious culprit because he had done stuff like this before. Even if it turns out he didn’t order the assassination, he has nobody to blame but himself for the fact that everyone thinks he did.



https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/opinion/putins-skripal-poison-deniability.html

Putin’s Favorite Tactic Has Finally Backfired


By Kadri Liik
March 26, 2018
LONDON — In the early spring of 2014, the world watched, astonished, as soldiers without insignia took over government buildings in Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, surrounded Ukrainian military bases and installed new leaders in the region. President Vladimir Putin of Russia claimed at the time that these were not Russian soldiers. Instead, he said, these were “local self-defense units.” Less than a month later, Russia annexed Crimea. And a year after that, Mr. Putin admitted what everyone had suspected all along: Yes, Russian soldiers had been involved.

That was when the term “plausible deniability” became a standard part of Western discussions about Russia. The practice of carrying out dubious deeds through the hands of proxies or other hard-to-identify agents has since become something of a trademark of Mr. Putin’s. Sometimes, the agents are indeed Kremlin actors in disguise, as they were in Crimea. But in the years since, Mr. Putin has pushed this tactic even further, implicitly or explicitly encouraging independent agents to act on their own, keeping the Kremlin’s hands clean. On many occasions, this has left the West a helpless bystander, unable to force Russia to account for its actions.

But time may be running out on this tactic. The attempted murder of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent who was found unresponsive in southwest England earlier this month, poisoned with a deadly nerve agent, may be the moment when “plausible deniability” has reached its limits. In fact, it now looks as if it is turning against its masters in the Kremlin. The United States’ decision on Monday, alongside Canada and a number of European countries, to expel Russians in retaliation for the poisoning makes clear to Moscow that its actions have consequences, whether it denies them or not.

Since the annexation of Crimea, Russia has resorted to “plausible deniability” again and again. The interference in the American presidential elections was a classic case: Mr. Putin has repeatedly emphasized that Russia has not intervened “at the level of the government,” but he admits that some “patriotic hackers” or trolls with Russian citizenship might indeed have been active. The Russian president has also attempted to reap policy benefits from the denied action, steering the conversation toward his own priorities: accusing the United States of interfering in Russia and making the case for cooperating to regulate the internet and social media.

This strategy isn’t an unmitigated success. In 2016, in a big embarrassment for Moscow, two Russian intelligence agents were indicted by Montenegro for plotting a coup that was supposed to take place under the cover of spontaneous anti-NATO protests. More tragic was the huge blunder of Russia’s proxies shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014. Moscow claims to this day that it had nothing to do with it, but it was nonetheless unable to escape reprimand from the international community.

The problem is that “plausible deniability” empowers all sorts of activists and proxies. Sometimes, these people act under the Kremlin’s instructions; other times, they set out independently, trying to do what they think would please Mr. Putin. They cannot always be successfully controlled, and they may inadvertently commit blunders or cross lines that the Kremlin did not want to cross.

In theory, Mr. Putin could disown them once they’ve made mistakes or been exposed, but this rarely happens. He values loyalty above almost all else and has no desire to punish people or groups he views as loyal, even if they misbehave.

But the use of proxies has now started to hinder Russia’s ability to make coherent policy. Western concerns over Russia’s interference in domestic affairs — which are blown far out of proportion but are still rooted in the real activities of Russian trolls and hackers — means that even the most legitimate practices, such as Russia promoting its businesses abroad, are now viewed with suspicion. Russia’s foreign ministry isn’t happy about this situation and neither are Moscow’s business circles. But they cannot raise the issue with the Kremlin: Because these activities are being denied, they can’t be brought up in normal policy discussions. So it’s effectively impossible for the different Russian institutions to come together and discuss what the country as a whole wins or loses by engaging in such actions.

The attempted murder of Mr. Skripal has made the situation even worse. Many aspects of this case remain puzzling: It is hard to understand why the Kremlin would want to escalate tensions with the West so intensely right now. This escalation is drastically limiting Russia’s foreign policy options, and Mr. Putin likes to have multiple options on table.

It is true that Mr. Putin doesn’t tolerate traitors, but exchanged spies like Mr. Skripal have traditionally been immune. Why would Moscow want to change those Cold War-era rules of spy swaps, rules from which Russia also benefits? It’s also doubtful that the attempted murder would be motivated by domestic Russian politics. The crime happened too late to feed into the elections, and it wasn’t employed in the campaign.

A more logical explanation is that an assassination attempt was carried out by some powerful actors outside the Kremlin — perhaps sanctioned in broad terms but not specifically. But even that raises many questions: Why leave such a clear “signature” — a nerve agent produced only in the former Soviet Union? Was it actually a message? If so, from whom and to whom?

Ultimately, none of this really matters at this point. “Patriotic hackers” or “patriotic trolls” can act independently, but if someone walks around using a military-grade nerve agent developed by Russia, that becomes a problem for Moscow, regardless of the circumstances of the case or the identity of the people involved. Even if the attack against Mr. Skripal was a “terrorist attack,” as the Russian foreign ministry improbably suggested, everyone’s eyes would still turn to Russia since it is the only known producer of the substance.

And Moscow’s track record with “plausible deniability” — from Ukraine to the United States — makes things worse. The world does not yet know the full details of the Skripal poisoning, but it does not feel like waiting, as the expulsions make clear. Too often in the past, Moscow has denied its involvement in cases that later end up being traced to the Kremlin or its proxies. The result is that its denials lack credibility. Now, the successful use of “plausible deniability” in all the previous cases collides with the Kremlin’s current interests and contributes to the verdict: guilty until proven innocent.

[ingliz]

if someone walks around using a military-grade nerve agent developed by Russia, that becomes a problem for Moscow, regardless of the circumstances of the case or the identity of the people involved.

VX - full name methylphosphonothioic acid - was first discovered by two chemists in the 1950s while they were working for the British company ICI (It was patented by Ranajit Ghosh and J.F. Newman in 1952). Someone, if the US is to be believed, has been 'walking around' using this military-grade nerve agent developed by the UK.

How come this isn't a problem for London?

[anarchist23]

Regarding this subject, RT News is worth watching, on the hour is best. lol


https://www.rt.com/on-air/

[Nonsense]

I'm curious, has any journalist actually asked Theresa May or any other members of the government who are levelling accusations against Russia - a) what is the evidence linking this alleged attack to Russia and b) why won't you produce it?

There is no 'evidence' that it was a Russian operation, the chemical formulae is an open 'secret' that Porton Down could produce with common chemicals in it's inventory.
It could then show it to any half-wit 'Tory' Minister to use as propaganda against Russia in order to boost 'Defence' spending in this period of 'Austerity '(for some).
It would then use that FAKE concocted 'evidence' to pull the wool over the eyes of any country that simply doesn't need any 'evidence' in order to join the daisy chain of FAKE political protest against Russia & Mr PUTIN.

The idea that Porton Down has a system in place that prohibits any production of such chemical concoctions is laughable.

I bet that NOT ONE OF THOSE COUNTRIES BACKING THE Theresa MAY CASE AGAINST RUSSIA HAS SEEN A SCINTILLA OF EVIDENCE AGAINST THEM.

The process of the LAW has NOT been allowed to proceed using proper 'evidence' gathering by the Police, the whole scene of the 'crime' was contaminated by the Police themselves & the military.

This government has judged & prosecuted the case against RUSSIA 'BEFORE' ANY 'evidence' has been produced.

We know that from the utterances of this 'government' & Jeremy CORBYN should have stuck to his position on the processing of the case.
There would NEVER be a chance of any fair trial, either against RUSSIA, or any individual,because of 'planted' 'evidence' ,'tampering' or 'production' of 'FAKE' 'evidence', last but not least ,'trial-by-media' & political involvement.

The legal system of this country dictates a strict compliance with the legal procedures in any 'potential' criminal case,'Police and Criminal Evidence' Act 1984 (PACE).

As yet, there is no compliance with the rule codes in respect of this case, for the simple reason that no evidence which can be used in a court case, has been produced, neither has any link been shown that connects that FAKE 'evidence' to any individual.

Which is why Boris Johnston, Theresa MAY et al are all purveyors of 'FAKE' 'intelligence' & 'evidence' in this case

[William Bennett]

There is no 'evidence' that it was a Russian operation, the chemical formulae is an open 'secret' that Porton Down could produce with common chemicals in it's inventory.
It could then show it to any half-wit 'Tory' Minister to use as propaganda against Russia in order to boost 'Defence' spending in this period of 'Austerity '(for some).
It would then use that FAKE concocted 'evidence' to pull the wool over the eyes of any country that simply doesn't need any 'evidence' in order to join the daisy chain of FAKE political protest against Russia & Mr PUTIN.

The idea that Porton Down has a system in place that prohibits any production of such chemical concoctions is laughable.

I bet that NOT ONE OF THOSE COUNTRIES BACKING THE Theresa MAY CASE AGAINST RUSSIA HAS SEEN A SCINTILLA OF EVIDENCE AGAINST THEM.

The process of the LAW has NOT been allowed to proceed using proper 'evidence' gathering by the Police, the whole scene of the 'crime' was contaminated by the Police themselves & the military.

This government has judged & prosecuted the case against RUSSIA 'BEFORE' ANY 'evidence' has been produced.

We know that from the utterances of this 'government' & Jeremy CORBYN should have stuck to his position on the processing of the case.
There would NEVER be a chance of any fair trial, either against RUSSIA, or any individual,because of 'planted' 'evidence' ,'tampering' or 'production' of 'FAKE' 'evidence', last but not least ,'trial-by-media' & political involvement.

The legal system of this country dictates a strict compliance with the legal procedures in any 'potential' criminal case,'Police and Criminal Evidence' Act 1984 (PACE).

As yet, there is no compliance with the rule codes in respect of this case, for the simple reason that no evidence which can be used in a court case, has been produced, neither has any link been shown that connects that FAKE 'evidence' to any individual.

Which is why Boris Johnston, Theresa MAY et al are all purveyors of 'FAKE' 'intelligence' & 'evidence' in this case

Portion Down people have reported they have been pressured by government to refer to the chemical in question as originating from Russia. Would,nt that be no more than an authorative lie? If the government needed PD to lie then they have no evidence. Duhh!!!

[skinster]

Unproven Allegations Against Trump and Putin Are Risking Nuclear War
“Russiagate” and the Skirpal affair have escalated dangers inherent in the new Cold War beyond those of the preceding one.

1. “Russiagate” and the attempted killing of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the UK have two aspects in common. Both blame Putin personally. And no actual facts have yet been made public.

§ Having discussed the fallacies of “Russiagate” often and at length, Cohen focuses on the Skripal affair. Putin had no conceivable motive, especially considering the upcoming World Cup Games in Russia, which both the government and the people consider to be very prestigious and thus important for the nation. No forensic or other evidence has yet been presented as to the nature of the purported nerve agent used or whether Russia still possesses it; or, even if so, whether Russia really is the only state whose agents did so; or when, where, and how it was inflicted on Skripal and his daughter; or why they and many others said to have been affected by this “lethal” agent are still alive. Nonetheless, even before the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has issued its obligatory tests, and while refusing to give the Russian government a required sample to test, the British leaders declared that it was “highly likely” Putin’s Kremlin had ordered the attack.

§ Nonetheless, on this flimsy basis, Western governments, led by the UK and reluctantly by the Trump administration, rushed to expel 100 or more Russian diplomats—the greatest number ever in this long history of such episodes.

§ It should be noted, however, that not all European governments did so, and a few others in only a token way, thereby again revealing European divisions over Russia policy.

2. This episode increases the risk of nuclear war between the United States and Russia.

§ Ever since the onset of the Atomic Age, the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction has kept the nuclear peace. This may have changed in 2002. when the Bush administration unilaterally withdrew from, thereby abrogating, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Since then, the United States and NATO have developed 30 or more anti-missile defense installments on land and sea, several very close to Russia. For Moscow, this was an American attempt to obtain a first-strike capability without mutual destruction. The Kremlin made this concern known to Moscow many times since 2002, proposing instead a mutual US-Russian developed anti-missile system, but was repeatedly rebuffed.

§ On March 1, Putin announced that Russia had developed nuclear weapons capable of eluding any anti-missile system, described it as a restoration of strategic parity, and called for new nuclear-weapons negotiations.

§ American mainstream political and media elites derided Putin’s announcement. Following the evaluation of several American nuclear experts, four Democratic senators appealed to (now former) Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to (in effect) respond positively to Putin’s appeal. Nothing came of it. Shortly after the Russian presidential election on March 18, President Trump himself, in a congratulatory call to Putin, proposed that they meet soon to discuss the “new nuclear arms race.” Trump was widely traduced as having revealed further evidence that he was “colluding” with Putin, perhaps even somehow controlled by the Kremlin.

§ The result has been, reflected in the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats, even more fraught US-Russian relations and with them, of course, the increased risk of nuclear war.

3. Many Americans, including political and media elites who shape public opinion, have been deluded into thinking, especially since the pseudo–“American-Russian friendship” of the Clinton 1990s, that nuclear war now really is “unthinkable.” That the mass expulsion of diplomats was merely “symbolic” and of no real lasting consequence. In reality, it has become more thinkable.

§ Diplomacy kept the nuclear peace during the preceding Cold War, but the mass expulsions—even pending the Kremlin’s response—seriously undermines the diplomatic process. They even criminalize it, as illustrated by denunciations of Trump’s phone conversation with Putin and by widespread political-media demands after he expelled a large number of Russia’s diplomats that he do “more”—such demands ranging from more sanctions on Russia to more military responses in Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere—to prove he is not under Putin’s control. (Identifying all expelled diplomats as “intelligence officers” is also misleading. Posting intelligence officers as diplomats has long been a mutual de facto arrangement tacitly, if not explicitly, agreed upon and known by both sides. Moreover, the designation might apply to embassy officials who study the other country’s economic, social, cultural, or political life. They gather and report “information.”)

§ In this connection, historians remind us of how the great powers gradually “slipped” into World War I. The lesson is the crucial role of diplomacy, now being undermined. Consider, for example, Syria. Recently, US-backed proxies apparently killed a number of Russian citizens also operating there. The Kremlin, through its Ministry of Defense, issued an ominous warning: If this happens again, Moscow will strike militarily not only at the proxies but also at US forces in the region who provided the weapons and launched the missiles. The same razor’s edge could easily occur where the United States and Russia are also eyeball-to-eyeball, as in Ukraine or the Baltic region. (Again, as Trump is being crippled to the extent that he probably could not negotiate a crisis the way President Kennedy did the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.)

4. The causes of the new risks of nuclear war are not “symbolic” but real and primarily political.

§ As diplomacy is diminished, the militarization of US-Russian relations increases.

§ Every weapon developed as extensively as have been nuclear weapons have eventually been used. Washington dropped two atomic bombs, genetic predecessors of their nuclear offspring, on Japan in 1945. (Before 1914, some people thought gas, the new weapon of mass destruction, would never be widely used in warfare.)

§ On both sides today, but especially in Washington, there is talk of developing “more precise nuclear warheads” that could be usable. Use of even a “small, precise” nuclear weapon would cross the Rubicon of apocalypse.

§ Meanwhile, the extreme demonization of Putin and growing Russophobia in the United States are elevating today’s small, less formidable Russia into a threat even graver than was the Soviet Union, against which US nuclear weapons were developed and intended. And this, again, in the context of diminished diplomacy and Trump’s diminished capacity to negotiate.

5. Thus, Cohen’s conclusion that the individuals and larger forces that promote the unproven allegations emanating from “Russiagate” and the Skripal incident are, in effect, nuclear-war mongers.

§ People who learn of Cohen’s views from the John Batchelor Show or elsewhere often ask him, “What can we do?”

§ There are no profound answers, only suggestions, such as that people can demand that their representatives in Congress protest these developments. (Overwhelmingly, members of Congress promote them or remain silent.) In the past, anti–Cold War, anti-nuke grassroots movements needed to be effective, and they had, leadership figures in Washington, particularly in Congress. Those in Congress and elsewhere silent today should echo the philosopher Hillel the Elder, as did Mikhail Gorbachev when he was nearly isolated in high Soviet circles: “If not now, when? If not us, who?”

§ People could also demand that mainstream print, broadcast, and cable media, which are licensed to serve the public interest, stop boycotting dozens of authoritative experts (not political partisans) who can counter the arguments of the near monopoly of pro–Cold War, anti-Trump Russia-policy voices. Media could start by replacing on-air, in-print former US intelligence chiefs, such as former CIA director John Brennan, who have their own agendas and some complicity in creating today’s dire relations with Russia, with alternative, even opposing opinions.

And people who are believers can pray.
https://www.thenation.com/article/unpro ... clear-war/

[William Bennett]

The recipe is freely available online and, if you only need a gramme of material, a bright undergraduate can make it in the university teaching lab. But, off the bat, the UK government is insisting that Russia must be the culprit.

Why?

The Palestinians under the supervision of the OPCW attempted to synthesise a Novchock chemical in 2016'
They succeeded and passed all the produce and data to the OPCW.
How curious The British Intel services did not inform the incomparable May&Johnson of this because their bucket labeled Russia most likely is obviously no more than a clowns prop.

[William Bennett]

I doubt any mainstream journalists are "in on" anything in the sense that they are actively part of a conspiracy.

The truth is that political journalists are generally a very incurious bunch who are far too close to their sources to be any use. They'll repeat the government line on this, not out of any real active agenda, but because they're too lazy to do their jobs properly.

Nah! Think journalist think edited journalist, got it?

[skinster]

Russia ‘Novichok’ Hysteria Proves Politicians and Media Haven’t Learned The Lessons of Iraq
If there’s one thing to be gleaned from the current atmosphere of anti Russian hysteria in the West, it’s that the US-led sustained propaganda campaign is starting to pay dividends. It’s not only the hopeless political classes and media miscreants who believe that Russia is hacking, meddling and poisoning our progressive democratic utopia – with so many pinning their political careers to this by now that’s it’s too late for them to turn back. As it was with Iraq in 2003, these dubious public figures require a degree of public support for their policies, and unfortunately many people do believe in the grand Russian conspiracy, having been sufficiently brow-beaten into submission by around-the-clock fear mongering and official fake news disseminated by government and the mainstream media.

What makes this latest carnival of warmongering more frightening is that it proves that the political and media classes never actually learned or internalized the basic lessons of Iraq, namely that the cessation of diplomacy and the declarations of sanctions (a prelude to war) against another sovereign state should not be based on half-baked intelligence and mainstream fake news. But that’s exactly what is happening with this latest Russian ‘Novichok’ plot.

Admittedly, the stakes are much higher this time around. The worst case scenario is unthinkable, whereby the bad graces of men like John Bolton and other military zealots, there may just be a thin enough mandate to short-sell another military conflagration or proxy war – this time against another nuclear power and UN Security Council member.

Enter stage right, where US President Donald Trump announced this week that the US is moving closer to war footing with Russia. It’s not the first time Trump has made such a hasty move in the absence any forensic evidence of a crime. Nowadays, hearsay, conjecture and social media postings are enough to declare war. Remember last April with the alleged “Sarin Attack” in Khan Sheikhoun, when the embattled President squeezed off 59 Tomahawk Cruise missiles against Syria – a decision, which as far as anyone can tell, was based solely on a few YouTube videos uploaded by the illustrious White Helmets. Back then Trump learned how an act of war against an existential enemy could take the heat off at home and translate into a bounce in the polls. Even La Résistance at CNN were giddy with excitement and threw their support behind Trump, with some pundits describing his decision to act as “Presidential.”

As with past high-profile western-led WMD allegations against governments in Syria and Iraq (the US and UK are patently unconcerned with multiple allegations of ‘rebel’ terrorists in Syria caught using chemical weapons), an identical progression of events appears to be unfolding following the alleged ‘Novichok’ chemical weapon poisoning of retired British-Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, Wiltshire on March 4th.

Despite a lack of evidence presented to the public other than the surreptitious “highly likely” assessments of British Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, President Trump once again has caved into pressure from Official Washington’s anti-Russian party line and ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats – which he accused of being spies. Trump also ordered the closure of the Russian Consulate in Seattle, citing speculative fears that Russia might be spying on a nearby Boeing submarine development base. It was the second round of US expulsions of Russian officials, with the first one ordered by the outgoing President Obama in December 2016, kicking out 35 Russian diplomats and their families (including their head chef) and closing the Russian Consulate in San Francisco, with some calling it “a den of spies”.

Trump’s move followed an earlier UK action on March 14th, which expelled 23 Russian diplomats also accused of being spies. This was in retaliation for the alleged poisoning of a retired former Russian-British double agent in Salisbury, England.

The ‘Collective’ Concern
It’s important to understand how this week’s brash move by Washington was coordinated in advance. The US and the UK are relying on their other NATO partners, including Germany, Poland, Italy, Canada, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Estonia and Lithuania – to create the image of a united front against perceived ‘Russian aggression’. As with multilateral military operations, multilateral diplomatic measures like this are not carried out on a whim.

Aside from this, there are two seriously worrying aspects of this latest US-led multilateral move against Russia. Firstly, this diplomatic offensive against Russia mirrors a NATO collective defense action, and by doing so, it tacitly signals towards an invocation of Article 5. According to AP, one German spokesperson called it a matter of ‘solidarity’ with the UK. Statements from the White House are no less encouraging:

“The United States takes this action in conjunction with our NATO allies, and partners around the world in response Russia’s use of a military grade chemical weapon on the soil of the United Kingdom — the latest in its ongoing pattern of destabilizing activities around the world,” the White House said.

“Today’s actions make the United States safer by reducing Russia’s ability to spy on Americans, and to conduct covert operations that threaten America’s national security.”

What this statement indicates is that any Russian foreign official or overseas worker in the West should be regarded as possible agents of espionage. In other words, the Cold War is now officially back on.

Then came this statement:

“With these steps, the United States and our allies and partners make clear to Russia that its actions have consequences.”

In an era of power politics, this language is anything but harmless. And while US and UK politicians and media pundits seem to be treating it all as a school yard game at times, we should all be reminded that this is how wars start.

The second issue with the Trump’s diplomatic move against Russia is that it extends beyond the territorial US – and into what should be regarded at the neutral zone of the United Nations. As part of the group of 60 expulsions, the US has expelled 12 Russian diplomats from the United Nations in New York City. While this may mean nothing to jumped-up political appointees like Nikki Haley who routinely threaten the UN when a UNGA vote doesn’t go her way, this is an extremely dangerous precedent because it means that the US has now created a diplomatic trap door where legitimate international relations duties are being carelessly rebranded as espionage – done on a whim and based on no actual evidence. By using this tactic, the US is casting aside decades of international resolutions, treaties and laws. Such a move directly threatens to undermine a fundamental principle of the United Nations which is its diplomatic mission and the right for every sovereign nation to have diplomatic representation. Without it, there is no UN forum and countries cannot talk through their differences and negotiate peaceful settlements. This is why the UN was founded in the first place. Someone might want to remind Nikki Haley of that.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER: Never in modern history has mediocrity in politics been celebrated as a virtue by so many.
On top of this, flippant US and UK officials are already crowing that Russia should be kicked off the UN Security Council. In effect, Washington is trying to cut the legs out from a fellow UN Security Council member and a nuclear power. This UNSC exclusion campaign has been gradually building up since 2014, when US officials have been repeatedly blocked by Russia over incidents in Syria and the Ukraine. Hence, Washington and its partners are frustrated with the UN framework, and that’s probably why they are so actively undermining it.

Those boisterous calls, as irrational and ill-informed as they might be, should be taken seriously because as history shows, these signs are a prelude to war.

Also, consider the fact that both the US and Russia have military assets deployed in Syria. How much of the Skripal case and the subsequent fall-out has to do with the fact that US Coalition and Gulf state proxy terrorists have lost their hold over key areas in Syria? The truly dangerous part of this equation is that the illegal military occupation by the US and its NATO ally Turkey of northeastern Syria is in open violation of international law, and so Washington and its media arms would like nothing more than to be history’s actor and bury its past indiscretions under a new layer of US-Russia tension in the Middle East.

Another WMD Debacle?
Is it really possible to push East-West relations over the edge on the basis of anecdotal evidence?

Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, highlighted the recent British High Court judgement which states in writing that the government’s own chemical weapons experts from the Porton Down research facility could not categorically confirm that a Russian ‘Novichok’ nerve agent was actually used in the Salisbury incident. Based on this, Murray believes that both British Prime Minster Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, and Britain’s deputy UN representative Jonathan Allen – have all lied to the public and the world when making their public statements that the Russians had in fact launched a deadly chemical weapons attack on UK soil. Murray states elaborates on this key point:

“This sworn Court evidence direct from Porton Down is utterly incompatible with what Boris Johnson has been saying. The truth is that Porton Down have not even positively identified this as a ‘Novichok’, as opposed to “a closely related agent”. Even if it were a ‘Novichok’ that would not prove manufacture in Russia, and a ‘closely related agent’ could be manufactured by literally scores of state and non-state actors.”

“This constitutes irrefutable evidence that the government have been straight out lying – to Parliament, to the EU, to NATO, to the United Nations, and above all to the people – about their degree of certainty of the origin of the attack. It might well be an attack originating in Russia, but there are indeed other possibilities and investigation is needed. As the government has sought to whip up jingoistic hysteria in advance of forthcoming local elections, the scale of the lie has daily increased.”

Murray has been roundly admonished by the UK establishment for his views, but he is still correct to ask the question: how could UK government leaders have known ‘who did it’ in advance of any criminal forensic investigation or substantive testing by Porton Down or an independent forensic investigation by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)?

One would hope we could all agree that it’s this sort of question which should have been given more prominence in the run-up to the Iraq War. In matters of justice and jurisprudence, that’s a fundamental question and yet, once again – it has been completely bypassed.

Murray is not alone. A number of scientists and journalists have openly questioned the UK’s hyperbolic claims that Russia had ordered a ‘chemical attack’ on British soil. In her recent report for the New Scientist, author Debora MacKenzie reiterates the fact that several countries could have manufactured a ‘Novichok’ class nerve agent and used it in the chemical attack on Russians Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury.

“British Prime Minister Theresa May says that because it was Russia that developed Novichok agents, it is ‘highly likely’ that Russia either attacked the Skripals itself, or lost control of its Novichok to someone else who did. But other countries legally created Novichok for testing purposes after its existence was revealed in 1992, and a production method has even been published.”

The New Scientist also quotes Ralf Trapp, a chemical weapons consultant formerly with the OPCW, who also reiterates a point worth reminding readers of – that inspectors are only able to tell where molecules sampled in Salisbury have come from if they have reference samples for the ingredients used.

“I doubt they have reference chemicals for forensic analysis related to Russian CW agents,” says Trapp. “But if Russia has nothing to hide they may let inspectors in.”

Even if they can identify it as Novichok, they cannot say that it came from Russia, or was ordered by the Russian government, not least of all because the deadly recipe is available on Amazon for only $28.45.

It should be noted that a substantial amount of evidence points to only two countries who are the most active in producing and testing biological and chemical weapons WMD – the United States and Great Britain. Their programs also include massive ‘live testing’ on both humans and animals with most of this work undertaken at the Porton Down research facility located only minutes away from the scene of this alleged ‘chemical attack’ in Salisbury, England.

Problems with the Official Story
If we put aside for the moment any official UK government theory, which is based on speculation backed-up by a series of hyperbolic statements and proclamations of Russian guilt, there are still many fundamental problems with the official story – maybe too many to list here, but I will address what I believe are a few key items of interest.

The UK police have now released a statement claiming that the alleged ‘Novichok’ nerve agent was somehow administered at the front door of Sergie Skripal’s home in Wiltshire. This latest official claim effectively negates the previous official story because it means that the Skripals would have been exposed a home at the latest around 13:00 GMT on March 4th, and then drove into town, parking their car at Sainsbury’s car park, then having a leisurely walk to have drinks at The Mill Pub, before for ordering and eating lunch at Zizzis restaurant, and then finally leaving the Zizzis and walking before finally retiring on a park bench – where emergency services were apparently called at 16:15 GMT to report an incident. Soon after, local Police arrived on the scene to find the Skripals on the bench in an “extremely serious condition”. Based on this story, the Skripals would have been going about their business for 3 hours before finally falling prey to the deadly WMD ‘Novichok’. From this, one would safely conclude that whatever has poisoned the pair was neither lethal nor could it have been a military grade WMD. Even by subtracting the home doorway exposure leg of this story, the government’s claim hardly adds up – as even a minor amount of any real lethal military grade WMD would have effected many more people along this timeline of events. Based on what we know so far, it seems much more plausible that the pair would have been poisoned (or drugged) at Zizzis restaurant, and not with a military grade nerve agent.

There is also the question of whether the front door story even adds up, with some journalists already pointing out how police with no protective gear were in fact stationed outside Sergei Skripal’s front door just days after the main event:

When this story initially broke, we were also told that the attending police officer who first arrived on the scene of this incident, Wiltshire Police Detective Sgt. Nick Bailey – was “fighting for his life” after being exposed to the supposed ‘deadly Russian nerve agent’. As it turned out, officer Bailey was treated in hospital and then discharged on March 22, 2018. To our knowledge, no information or photos of Bailey’s time in care are available to the public so we cannot know the trajectory of his health, or if he was even exposed to the said “Novichok’ nerve agent as the government and media have repeatedly said.

In the immediate aftermath, the public were also told initially that approximately 4o people were taken into medical care because of “poison exposure”. This bogus claim was promulgated by some mainstream media outlets, like Rupert Murdoch’s Times newspaper. In reality, no one showed signed of “chemical weapons” exposure, meaning that this story was just another example of mainstream corporate media fake news designed to stoke tension and fear in the public. We exposed this at the time on the UK Column News here:

To further complicate matters, this week we were told that Yulia Skripal has now turned the corner and is in recovery and is speaking to police from her hospital bed. If this is true, then it further proves that whatever the alleged poison agent was which the Skripals were exposed to – it was not a lethal, military grade nerve agent. If it had been, then most likely the Skripals and many others would not be alive right now.

Unfortunately, in this new age of state secrecy, we can expect that most of the key information relating to this case may be sealed indefinitely under a national security letter. In the case of Porton Down scientist David Kelly, the key information is sealed (hidden) for another 60+ years (if we’re lucky, we might get to see it in the year 2080). This means that we just have to take their word for it, or to borrow the words of the newly crowned UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson – any one asking questions, “should just go away and shut up.” Such is the lack of decorum and transparency in this uncomfortably Orwellian atmosphere.

While Britain insists that it has ‘irrefutable proof’ that Russia launched a deadly nerve-gas attack to murder the Skripals, the facts simply do not match-up to the rhetoric.

The Litvinenko Conspiracy
It’s important to note that as far as public perceptions are concerned, the official Skripal narrative has been build directly on top of the Litvinenko case.

In order to try and reinforce the government’s speculative arguments, the UK establishment has resurrected the trial-by-media case of another Russian defector, former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who is said to have died after being poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 in his tea at a restaurant in London’s Mayfair district in late 2006.

Despite not having any actual evidence as to who committed the crime, the British authorities and the mainstream media have upheld an almost religious belief that the Russian FSB (formerly KGB), under the command of Vladimir Putin, had ordered the alleged radioactive poisoning of Litvinenko.

The media mythos was reinforced in 2016, when a British Public Inquiry headed by Sir Robert Owen accused senior Russian officials of ‘probably having motives to approve the murder’ of Litvinenko. Again, this level of guesswork and speculation would never meet the standard of an actual forensic investigation worthy of a real criminal court of law, but so far as apportioning blame to another nation or head of state is concerned – it seems fair enough for British authorities.

Following the completion of the inquiry, Sir Robert had this to say:

“Taking full account of all the evidence and analysis available to me, I find that the FSB operation to kill Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr Patrushev and also by President Putin.”

Contrary to consensus reality )popular belief), Owen’s inquiry was not at all definitive. Quite the opposite in fact, and in many ways it mirrors how the Skripal case has been presented to the public. Despite offering no evidence of any criminal guilt, Owen’s star chamber maintained that Vladimir Putin “probably” approved the operation to assassinate Litvinenko. Is “probably” really enough to assign guilt in a major international crime? When it comes to high crimes of state, the answer seems to be yes.

According to Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, that UK inquiry was “neither transparent nor public” and was “conducted mostly behind doors, with classified documents and unnamed witnesses contributing to the result…”

Zakharova highlighted the fact that two key witnesses in the case – Litvinenko’s chief patron, a UK-based anti-Putin defector billionaire oligarch named Boris Berezovsky, and the owner of Itsu restaurant in London’s Mayfair where the incident is said to have taken place, had both suddenly died under dubious circumstances. The British authorities went on to accuse two Russian men in the Litvineko murder – businessman Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun. Both have denied the accusations. Despite the lack of any real evidence, the United States Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control blacklisted both Lugovoi and Kovtun, as well as Russian persons Stanislav Gordievsky, Gennady Plaksin and Aleksandr I. Bastrykin – under the Magnitsky Act, which freezes their assets held in American financial institutions, and bans them from conducting any transactions or traveling to the United States.

Notice the familiar pattern: even if the case is inconclusive, or collapses due to a lack of evidence, the policies remain in place.

Despite all the pomp and circumstance however, Owen’s official conspiracy theory failed to sway even Litvinenko’s own close family members. While Litvinenko’s widow Marina maintains that it was definitely the Russian government who killed her husband, Alexsander’s younger brother Maksim Litvinenko, based in Rimini, Italy, believes the British report “ridiculous” to blame the Kremlin for the murder of his brother, stating that he believes British security services had more of a motive to carry out the assassination.

“My father and I are sure that the Russian authorities are not involved. It’s all a set-up to put pressure on the Russian government,” said Maksim to the Mirror newspaper, and that such reasoning can explain why the UK waited almost 10 years to launch the inquiry his brother’s death.

Maxim also said that Britain had more reason to kill his brother than the Russians, and believes that blaming Putin for the murder was part of a wider effort to smear Russia.

Following the police investigation, Alexander’s father Walter Litvinenko, also said that he had regretted blaming Putin and the Russian government for his son’s death and did so under intense pressure at the time.

For anyone skeptical of the official proclamations of the British state and the mainstream media on the Litvinenko case, it’s worth reading the work of British journalist Will Dunkerly here.

With so many questions hanging over the actually validity of the British state’s accusations against Russia, it’s somewhat puzzling that British police would say they are still ‘looking for similarities’ between the Skripal and Litvinenko cases in order to pinpoint a modus operandi.

The admission by the British law enforcement that their investigation may take months before any conclusion can be drawn also begs the question: how could May have been so certain so quick? The answer should be clear by now: she could not have known it was a ‘Novichok’ agent, no more than she could know that ‘Russia did it.’

A Plastic Cold War
Historically speaking, in the absence of any real mandate or moral authority, governments suffering from an identity crisis, or a crisis of legitimacy will often try and define themselves not based on what they stand for, but rather what (or who) they are in opposition to. This profile suits both the US and UK perfectly at the moment. Both governments are limping along with barely a mandate, and have orchestrated two of the worst and most hypocritical debacles in history with their illegal wars in both Syria and Yemen. With their moral high-ground a thing of the past, these two countries require a common existential enemy in order to give their international order legitimacy. The cheapest, easiest option is to reinvigorate a framework which was already there, which is the Cold War framework. Reds under the bed. The Russian are coming etc. It’s cheap and it’s easy because it has already been seeded with 70 years of Cold War propaganda and institutionalized racism in the West directed against Russians. If you don’t believe me, just go look at some of the posters, watch the TV propaganda in the US, or read about the horrific McCarthyist blacklists and political witch hunts. I remember growing up in America and being taught “never again” and “we’re past all of that now, those days of irrational paranoia are behind us, we’re better than that now.” But that madness of the past was not a fringe affair – it was a mainstream madness, and one which was actively promoted by government and mainstream media.

You would have to be at the pinnacle of ignorance to deny that this is exactly what we are seeing today, albeit a more plastic version, but just as immoral and dangerous. Neocons love it, and now Liberals love it too.

Dutifully fanning the flames of war, Theresa May has issued her approval of the NATO members diplomatic retaliation this week exclaiming, “We welcome today’s actions by our allies, which clearly demonstrate that we all stand shoulder to shoulder in sending the strongest signal to Russia that it cannot continue to flout international law.”

But from an international law perspective, can May’s ‘highly likely’ assurances really be enough to position the west on war footing with Russia? When Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn asked these same fundamental questions on March 14th, he was shouted down by the Tory bench, and also by the hawkish Blairites sitting behind him.

Afterwards, the British mainstream press launched yet another defamation campaign against Corbyn, this time with the UK’s Daily Mail calling the opposition leader a “Kremlin Stooge”, followed by British state broadcaster the BBC who went through the effort of creating a mock-up graphic of Corbyn in front of the Kremlin (pictured above) apparently wearing a Russian hat, as if to say he was a Russian agent. It was a new low point in UK politics and media.

Considering the mainstream media’s Corbyn smear alongside the recent insults hurled at Julian Assange by Tory MP Sir Alan Duncan who stood up in front of Parliament and called the Wikileaks founder a “miserable worm”, what this really says is that anyone who dares defy the official state narrative will be beaten down and publicly humiliated. In other words, dissent in the political ranks will not be tolerated. It’s almost as if we are approaching a one party state.

Would a UN Security Council member and nuclear power really be so brazen as to declare de facto war on another country without presenting any actual evidence or completing a genuine forensic investigation?

So why the apparent rush to war? Haven’t we been here before, in 2003? Will the people of the West allow it to happen again?

As with Tony Blair’s WMD’s in 2003, the British public are meant to take it on faith and never question the official government line. And just like in 2003, the UK has opened the first door on the garden path, with the US and its ‘coalition’ following safely behind, shoulder to shoulder. In this latest version of the story, Tony Blair is being played by Theresa May, and Jack Straw is being played by Boris Johnson. On the other side of the pond, a hapless Bush is hapless Trump. Both Blair and Straw, along with the court propagandist Alastair Campbell – are all proven to have been liars of the highest order, and if there were any real accountability or justice, these men and their collaborators in government should be in prison right now. The fact they aren’t is why the door has been left wide open for the exact same scam to be repeated again, and again.

Iraq should have taught us all to be skeptical about official claims of chemical weapons evidence, and to face the ugly truth about how most major wars throughout history have waged by the deception – and by western governments. What does it tell us about today’s society if people still cannot see this?

That’s why it was wrong to let Blair, Bush and others off the hook for war crimes. By doing so, both the British and Americans are inviting a dark phase of history to repeat itself again, and again.

It’s high time that we break the cycle.
http://21stcenturywire.com/2018/03/31/r ... s-of-iraq/

[noemon]

I doubt any mainstream journalists are "in on" anything in the sense that they are actively part of a conspiracy.

The truth is that political journalists are generally a very incurious bunch who are far too close to their sources to be any use. They'll repeat the government line on this, not out of any real active agenda, but because they're too lazy to do their jobs properly.

Mate you cannot be serious here, journalists are beholden to their editors-in-chief who in turn are beholden to the CEO's and owners of the paper who in turn are bed-fellows with their mates inside and outside office. When it comes to manufacturing consent, Chomsky has written a great deal about it. Take for example the Guardian and the following picture.

The picture reproduced on these pages is of Fikret Alic, a Bosnian Muslim, emaciated and stripped to the waist, apparently imprisoned behind a barbed wire fence in a Bosnian Serb camp at Trnopolje. It was taken from a videotape shot on 5 August 1992 by an award-winning British television team, led by Penny Marshall (ITN) with her cameraman Jeremy Irvin, accompanied by Ian Williams (Channel 4) and the reporter Ed Vulliamy from the Guardian newspaper.

Looking at the picture you think that the guys are prisoners in a Bosnian death camp but with a closer look you can see that the wire is on the side of the "inmates", they could take out the nails, in fact it is the journalists who are enclosed by the barbed wire and the "inmates" who are roaming free outside of it and who have merely congregated there to speak to the journalists who are filming from the inside of a chicken wire. It is a fake-news picture proven to be so in a British court of law. Yet the people who created(ITN, Channel 4 and Guardian) the picture were awarded for the picture, the British Academy Television Award for Best News and Current Affairs Journalism, this picture was reproduced in every single western newspaper from Germany, to Italy, France, Spain, UK, US. The US President(Clinton) publicly used the picture as evidence that the Serbs are Nazis and as such he no longer requires "UN approval to bomb Yugoslavia" and so he did. Was that being "lazy"? Was that an "international conspiracy" or merely western allies being western allies the second year(1992) of the SU's collapse trying to tear up the Yugoslavian pieces inside a nation where every minority had constituent nation rights making even the Muslim Bosnians equal partners in a federal government in a European state, a unique feature unheard of in any other European country. Rights that for example not even British constituent nations enjoy in the current day and age as the Yugoslav Federal Government required a majority among the constituent nations as well.

See full expose here with the journalists being filmed entering the chicken wire and calling the "inmates" from inside of it:

Do you think that this whole crew on a mission in Yugoslavia, ITN, Channel 4, Guardian, found themselves "accidentally" inside the chicken wire? You think that all their bosses at home were unaware?

[skinster]

Yeah, not to mention how lucrative it is to shill the party line. A lot of those who manufactured consent to invade Iraq still have their jobs, or better jobs.

Granted, we are off-topic.

What do you think about the OP, @noemon?

[noemon]

What do you think about the OP, @noemon?

My view is that I am not convinced that the Russians were behind this. The double-agent had been exchanged years ago with other spies and if the Russians wanted to punish him, they could have done so a long time ago and much more effectively. Botching a hit-job, ineffectively using a super secret poison to kill someone who has outlived his usefulness is not a very convincing scenario, at least not for my cynical idiosyncrasy.

[Heisenberg]

Mate you cannot be serious here, journalists are beholden to their editors-in-chief who in turn are beholden to the CEO's and owners of the paper who in turn are bed-fellows with their mates inside and outside office.

I've never denied that newspapers have an agenda, and of course editors put pressure on writers.

What I was saying is that the main problem with run-of-the-mill political reporters (not the more senior guys) is that they are slaves to conventional wisdom and are either too scared or too lazy to ask too many awkward questions.

A lot of this is down to the way Alastair Campbell managed to turn major newspapers into glorified PR agencies during the Blair years by threatening to (and in some cases, succeeding in) destroy people's careers if they didn't toe the New Labour line. On the other hand, if reporters would do as they were told, he'd make sure they were fed various "exclusive" stories that would advance their careers. That's what I mean about journalists being too close to their sources.

To sum up, I am being serious, and our positions aren't actually that far apart. The main difference is that I don't think most political reporters start out thinking "I'm going to advance X agenda" - they basically get bullied into it and inevitably become lazy.