Pepe Escobar On Syria, Iran, and “Chaos In International Relations”

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http://www.zerohedge.com

by Tyler Durden

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

 04/20/2018

Any meaningful political resolution to the turmoil in the Middle East now seems more elusive than ever…

Even in the context of a post-truth geopolitical environment run amok, Russian President Vladimir Putin telling his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani over the phone that any further Western strikes against Syria may “lead to chaos in international relations” should at least be seen for what it is; a massive understatement.

According to the Kremlin, Putin and Rouhani agreed that what cynics are calling the F.U.K.U.S. – or France, UK, US – strikes have damaged the chances of achieving any meaningful political resolution in Syria.

That translates into Putin and Rouhani acknowledging that Washington, London and Paris are pulling no punches to be back in the game, directly clashing with the painstaking Astana peace process led by Russia, Iran and Turkey.

Significantly, Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari reminded acting US Secretary of State John Sullivan, also over the phone, about “the necessity to prioritize finding a political solution and that the Syrian people alone should determine their own fate.”

This means essentially that the “4+1” – Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, plus Hezbollah – which were at the vanguard of destroying ISIS, or Islamic State, and other crypto-jihadi outfits in Syria, remain in synch. The counter-terror HQ of the “4+1” was in Baghdad. As much as Baghdad may harbor ideological divergences with Damascus, their common strategy is built upon the fight against Salafi-jihadis of all stripes.

United front

Iraq, alongside Lebanon, was one of the very few nations across the Middle East that condemned the US-UK-France strikes. The GCC petrodollar club – led by the House of Saud – predictably supported it, as their agenda never strayed away from regime change.

Moscow, Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad are showing a united front even as the alleged chemical attack in Douma – the reason for the strikes – is being forcefully debunked. Additionally, pesky questions remain unanswered on why more than 100 missiles were necessary to destroy only three largely empty state-run scientific centers in Damascus and Homs.

Even after Damascus and Baghdad declared victory, the Salafi-jihadi galaxy may be seriously wounded in both Syria and Iraq, but is not extinct. Turkey is still cultivating some nasty connections.

So the key variable in the Astana process – which involves complex economic and military trade offs – remains Ankara, which has no intention of abandoning its sprawling Syrian ops before subduing the Kurdish YPG all around.

Incidentally, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, unlike his partners, supported the strikes on Syria. At the same time, Erdogan is itching for the Russian S-400 missile system to be delivered to Turkey as soon as possible, much to the displeasure of NATO.

The real test for the Astana partners will be Idlib – which is already the subject of fierce negotiations. Iran’s special envoy for Syrian affairs, Ali Akbar Velayati, is on the record as saying the next war objective is in fact Idlib.

Moscow has prodded Erdogan to deliver the Kurdish canton of Afrin – now run by the Turkish military – to Damascus. There’s no evidence – yet – this will be accepted. Russian forces did leave Afrin before the Turkish offensive. So the Turks, in reciprocity, should abandon their bases across Idlib as well.

The key takeaway is that the US-UK-France troika – not to mention the House of Saud – has absolutely no means to influence these developing facts on the ground. 

Iran targeted by financial missiles

If the strikes on Syria have de facto added to the “chaos in international relations” alluded to by Putin, that may be just the opening compared to the main course; the fate of the JCPOA, aka the Iran nuclear deal, to be decided next month.

The European Union foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, ahead of the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Luxembourg, was unequivocal: “The European Union has always made it clear that for us, keeping the agreement in place is vital. It is a strategic interest for the European Union and we will stick to it.”

Pointing to what, for all practical purposes, is a Trump administration May 12 deadline, Mogherini added: “We are doing all we can to work with our American friends to make sure that all parties stay fully committed to the full implementation of the agreement.”

Everyone in Brussels knows Tehran is fully complying with the JCPOA, as stated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 10 successive reports.

Still, France, Britain and Germany are dabbling with the notion of sanctions against Iranian “militias and commanders” fighting on the side of Damascus as a means to appease President Trump. Italy, backed by Austria, is vehemently against it.

The bottom line, as diplomats confirmed to Asia Times, is that Trump’s deadline to “fix” the JCPOA simply won’t be met. What really matters for individual EU nations, as discussed in diplomatic circles, is to increase lucrative business with Iran.

Restricted access to US dollars

All this is happening as Iranian central bank governor Valiollah Seif denounced what amounts to a financial missile strike: “Enemies outside of our borders, in various different guises, are fueling this issue and are going to some effort to make conditions tougher for the people.”

Valiollah was referring to the rial crisis. The Iranian currency was trading at 40,000 to the US dollar in 2017, but has just plunged to 60,000 rials to the dollar. Tehran hastily announced a plan to introduce a currency peg at 42,000 rials.

The widespread view in Tehran is that Wahhabi enemies Riyadh and the Emirates are restricting Tehran’s access to US dollars. Not to mention that some stiff Washington bank financing sanctions remain in effect.

Tehran is facing tough days ahead. Even with the EU remaining committed to the JCPOA, a new batch of Washington sanctions, enthusiastically pursued by John “Bomb Iran” Bolton, could eventually force as many as 500,000 barrels a day of Iranian crude out of the market.

If Washington withdraws – unilaterally – from the JCPOA, or insists on alterations Tehran deems unacceptable, Plan B is already on: Moscow and Beijing are willing and able to help Tehran reboot its civilian nuclear program.

That was discussed already in January by the Deputy Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Mohammad Ahmadian. China is actively considering the possibility of building small nuclear power plants in Iran.

All that points, once again, to the ongoing, massive Eurasia integration project – the cross-pollination of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EEU) – featuring, not by accident, the three key nodes: China, Russia and Iran.

And to add it all up, in this case the European arm of NATO even turned off the “aggression” rhetoric; the dogs of war (“Real Men Go to Tehran”) may bark again, but even that won’t force the EU caravan to desist from doing business with Persia. 

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Russian diplomat says Britain deserves title of world’s worst genocide perpetrator

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tass.com

April 19, 2018

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman recalled that British colonists exterminated up to 90%-95% of the aborigines in the process of colonizing Australia

UK ambassador in Moscow Laurie Bristow

© EPA-EFE/STRINGER

MOSCOW, April 19. /TASS/. Britain may well be described as the holder of the world’s genocide record, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a news briefing on Thursday in response to claims by UK ambassador in Moscow Laurie Bristow to the effect Russia was allegedly behind a number of contract killings.

“Britain is the world’s worst genocider,” she said. “The thought of how many millions of innocent people were put to death in the British colonies is terrifying.”

Zakharova recalled that according to various estimates, British colonists exterminated up to 90%-95% of the aborigines in the process of colonizing Australia.

In the 1870s, Britain conducted genocide against the Zulus in Cape Colony, and in 1954-1961, against the Kikuyu people in Kenya, she recalled.

“In retaliation for the killing of 32 white colonists the British authorities exterminated 300,000 members of the Kikuyu people and drove another 1.5 million into concentration camps,” she said.

In all, Zakharova made public 17 pages of archive information describing Britain’s unseemly actions in the world scene over many years.

‘I am human, I bleed red’: Twitter user hits back after UK govt accuses her of being ‘Russian bot’

This is rich coming from one of the worse war criminal nations on the planet. We are all Russian bots silly British government  wankers! At least until you start spreading truth instead of lies and propaganda.

RT.com

20 Apr, 2018

© SyrianGirlpartisan / YouTube

After reportedly being accused by the UK government of being a Russian bot, Twitter user @Partisangirl has responded with a picture of herself, declaring: “I am human. I am not a machine! I bleed red.”

There is growing evidence that the British government is labelling real people as bots, based on their non-mainstream and inconvenient views.

The Guardian reports that Syrian Twitter user @Partisangirl has been accused of being a Russian bot that has spread disinformation on social media in response to the Skripal poisoning case.

In response, @Partisangirl revealed that she is a journalist and her real name is Maram Susli.  She tweeted that she is in fact a living human being and not a bot – as claimed by UK government officials. She said: “I AM Human. I am not a machine! I bleed red. My name is Maram Susli and I am a journalist. This is how far the #FAKENEWS has come.”

Screenshot from Twitter

According to the reports, new Whitehall analysis suggests that there has been a 4,000 percent increase in the spread of so-called propaganda from Russia-linked social media accounts which they say can be identified as automated bots.

The Guardian suggests that @Partisangirl was targeted by the British government because she reached 61 million users with 2,300 posts over a 12-day period. Much of what she tweeted is counter to the narrative generally put forward by the British government, which appears to be enough to make her a target in the current political climate.

It comes on the back of UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s Mansion House speech earlier this year, where she warned the Kremlin: “I have a very simple message for Russia. We know what you are doing. And you will not succeed.” The evidence so far suggest May have been misled about how accurate her intelligence is.

Another account reportedly identified was @Ian56789, which sent 100 posts a day during a 12-day period from April 7, and reached 23 million users, before the account was suspended. However, Sky News appears to have contacted the once again human owner of that account. He also seems to fit the profile of being targeted for government accusations due to his non-mainstream views on major issues.

To kick off the interview, Sky reporters asked Ian – failing to providing a surname – straight out if he was a Russian bot. “That is a 100 percent total lie and fabrication from the UK government,” was the obvious answer from the very human-looking Ian.

“They are singling out or will attack anyone who calls out the UK government’s lies on what has been happening recently. They have attacked me specifically because my Twitter account has recently got quite a lot of traction,” he told Sky News on Friday.

 Ian then went on to push his own viewpoint on the UK government, before moving on to the alleged Syrian chemical attack. “The government’s lies are very transparent and easy to see – anybody who applies a smattering of critical thinking will immediately call out numerous lies and the government position just completely collapses,” he said.

“You had Major General Jonathan Shaw on [Sky News] recently and he started off with the question: what possible motive would [Syrian President Bashar] Assad have to carry out a chemical weapons attack when that was guaranteed to bring the wrath of the whole world upon him? He wouldn’t do it.”

Ian took to his blog to share the statement he issued to Sky, in which he speaks of the strikes against Syria. “The US, UK and French bombing of Syria carried out on the night of April 13/14, even though it was only a cosmetic PR stunt, with only very trivial damage being done, was still a War Crime,” he wrote.

His blog post goes on to mention someone else questioning the chain of events currently being pedaled by the UK and allies – award-winning journalist Robert Fisk.

READ MORE: Scot to be kidding: ‘Russian troll’ turns out to be Glasgow security guard

This is not the first time Twitter users have been accused of being at the behest of the Kremlin to spread Russian propaganda. @didgery77332nd, also known as ‘Smoo’, was accused in November 2017 of being a “Russian troll” by crowdfunded journalism outlet Byline, which had concluded that it was a fair to say that Smoo was a “foreign-based troll pushing Russian messaging.”

Embarrassingly for Byline, it turned out that @didgery77332nd was in fact a security guard from Glasgow.

Could the US win World War III without using nuclear weapons?

“An opinion poll run by Stanford University’s Scott Sagan found that the US public would not oppose the preemptive use of even nuclear weapons provided that the US itself was not affected. “

45th annual Sandhurst Military Skills Competition

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theconversation.com

Dan Plesch

Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, SOAS, University of London

April 19, 2018

As the US, Russia and China test each other’s patience and strategic focus, speculation about the chances of a world war has hit a new high. But many of the people seriously engaged in this weighty discussion often get it wrong.

When it comes to estimating military capability, the Western media is principally concerned with the weapons capabilities of weaker states – and it rarely pays much attention to the colossal capability of the US, which still accounts for most of the world’s defense spending.

Any sensible discussion of what a hypothetical World War III might look like needs to begin with the sheer size and force of America’s military assets. For all that China and Russia are arming up on various measures, US commanders have the power to dominate escalating crises and counter opposing forces before they can be used.

Take missile warfare alone. The US Navy already has 4,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, and the Navy and Air Force are currently taking delivery of 5,000 JASSM conventional cruise missiles with ranges from 200-600 miles. Barely visible to radar, these are designed to destroy “hardened” targets such as nuclear missile silos. Russia and China, by contrast, have nothing of equivalent quantity or quality with which to threaten the US mainland.

The same holds true when it comes to maritime forces. While much is made of Russia’s two frigates and smaller vessels stationed off the Syrian coast, France alone has 20 warships and an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean – and US standing forces in the area include six destroyers equipped with scores of cruise missiles and anti-missile systems. At the other end of Europe, the Russian military is threatening the small Baltic states, but it is rarely noted that the Russian Baltic fleet is the same size as Denmark’s and half the size of Germany’s.

Meanwhile, China’s aggressively expansionist behaviour in the South China Sea is reported alongside stories of its first aircraft carrier and long-range ballistic missiles. But for all that the Chinese navy is large and growing, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, it’s still only numerically equivalent to the combined fleets of Japan and Taiwan, while the US boasts 19 aircraft carriers worldwide if its marine assault ships are included.

But overhanging all this, of course, is the nuclear factor.

Out of the sky

The US, Russia and China are all nuclear-armed; Vladimir Putin recently unveiled a new fleet of nuclear-capable missiles which he described as “invincible in the face of all existing and future systems”, and some have suggested that China may be moving away from its no-first-use policy. This is all undeniably disturbing. While it has long been assumed that the threat of nuclear weapons acts as a deterrent to any war between the major powers, it’s also possible that the world may simply have been riding its luck. But once again, the US’s non-nuclear capabilities are all too often overlooked.

US leaders may in fact believe they can remove Russia’s nuclear deterrent with an overwhelming conventional attack backed up by missile defences. This ability was cultivated under the Prompt Global Strike programme, which was initiated before 9/11 and continued during the Obama years. Organised through the US Air Force’s Global Strike Command, it is to use conventional weapons to attack anywhere on Earth in under 60 minutes.

This is not to say the task would be small. In order to destroy Russia’s nuclear missiles before they can be launched, the US military would need to first blind Russian radar and command and communications to incoming attack, probably using both physical and cyber attacks. It would then have to destroy some 200 fixed and 200 mobile missiles on land, a dozen Russian missile submarines, and Russian bombers. It would then need to shoot down any missiles that could still be fired.

Russia is not well positioned to survive such an attack. Its early warning radars, both satellite and land-based, are decaying and will be hard to replace. At the same time, the US has and is developing a range of technologies to carry out anti-satellite and radar missions, and it has been using them for years. (All the way back in 1985, it shot down a satellite with an F15 jet fighter.) That said, the West is very dependent on satellites too, and Russia and China continue to develop their own anti-satellite systems.

The air war

Russia’s bomber aircraft date back to the Soviet era, so despite the alarm they provoke when they nudge at Western countries’ airspace, they pose no major threat in themselves. Were the Russian and US planes to face each other, the Russians would find themselves under attack from planes they couldn’t see and that are any way out of their range.

US and British submarine crews claim a perfect record in constantly shadowing Soviet submarines as they left their bases throughout the Cold War. Since then, Russian forces have declined and US anti-submarine warfare has been revived, raising the prospect that Russian submarines could be taken out before they could even launch their missiles.

The core of the Russia’s nuclear forces consists of land-based missiles, some fixed in silos, others mobile on rail and road. The silo-based missiles can now be targeted by several types of missiles, carried by US planes almost invisible to radar; all are designed to destroy targets protected by deep concrete and steel bunkers. But a problem for US war planners is that it might take hours too long for their missile-carrying planes to reach these targets – hence the need to act in minutes.

The US’s B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. AMMHPhotography via Shutterstock

One apparently simple solution to attacking targets very quickly is to fit quick nuclear ballistic missiles with non-nuclear warheads. In 2010, Robert Gates, then serving as secretary of defence under Barack Obama, said that the US had this capability. Intercontinental ballistic missiles take just 30 minutes to fly between the continental US’s Midwest and Siberia; if launched from well-positioned submarines, the Navy’s Tridents can be even quicker, with a launch-to-target time of under ten minutes.

From 2001, the US Navy prepared to fit its Trident missiles with either inert solid warheads – accurate to within ten meters – or vast splinter/shrapnel weapons. Critics have argued that this would leave a potential enemy unable to tell whether they were under nuclear or conventional attack, meaning they would have to assume the worst. According to US Congressional researchers, the development work came close to completion, but apparently ceased in 2013.

Nonetheless, the US has continued to develop other technologies across its armed services to attack targets around the world in under an hour – foremost among them hypersonic missiles, which could return to Earth at up to ten times the speed of sound, with China and Russia trying to keep up.

Missile envy

The remainder of Russia’s nuclear force consists of missiles transported by rail. An article on Kremlin-sponsored news outlet Sputnik described how these missile rail cars would be so hard to find that Prompt Global Strike might not be as effective as the US would like – but taken at face value, the article implies that the rest of the Russian nuclear arsenal is in fact relatively vulnerable.

Starting with the “Scud hunt” of the First Gulf War, the US military has spent years improving its proficiency at targeting mobile ground-based missiles. Those skills now use remote sensors to attack small ground targets at short notice in the myriad counter-insurgency operations it’s pursued since 2001.

An Aegis Ashore Missile Defence System under the US flag in Europe. EPA/Robert Ghement

If the “sword” of Prompt Global Strike doesn’t stop the launch of all Russian missiles, then the US could use the “shield” of its own missile defences. These it deployed after it walked out of a treaty with Russia banning such weapons in 2002.

While some of these post-2002 missile defense systems have been called ineffective, the US Navy has a more effective system called Aegis, which one former head of the Pentagon’s missile defense programs claims can shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles. Some 300 Aegis anti-ballistic missiles now equip 40 US warships; in 2008, one destroyed a satellite as it fell out of orbit.

War mentality

In advance of the Iraq war, various governments and onlookers cautioned the US and UK about the potential for unforeseen consequences, but the two governments were driven by a mindset impervious to criticism and misgivings. And despite all the lessons that can be learned from the Iraq disaster, there’s an ample risk today that a similarly gung-ho attitude could take hold.

Foreign casualties generally have little impact on domestic US politics. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who died under first sanctions and then war did not negatively impact presidents Clinton or George W. Bush. Neither might the prospect of similar casualties in Iran or North Korea or other states, especially if “humanitarian” precision weapons are used.

But more than that, an opinion poll run by Stanford University’s Scott Sagan found that the US public would not oppose the preemptive use of even nuclear weapons provided that the US itself was not affected. And nuclear Trident offers that temptation.

The control of major conventional weapons as well as WMD needs urgent attention from international civil society, media and political parties. There is still time to galvanise behind the Nobel-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and the nuclear ban treaty, and to revive and globalise the decaying arms control agenda of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which played a vital part in bringing the Cold War to a largely peaceful end.

Like the Kaiser in 1914, perhaps Trump or one of his successors will express dismay when faced with the reality a major US offensive unleashes. But unlike the Kaiser, who saw his empire first defeated and then dismembered, perhaps a 21st-century US president might get away with it.

Paul Craig Roberts: The Crisis Is Only In Its Beginning Stages

“The problem is that by turning the other cheek, Putin encourages more aggression from Washington. Putin is dealing with neoconservative psychopaths. He is not dealing with common sense.”

Pics added by Tales

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With permission from

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org

Paul Craig Roberts

April 17, 2018

The Crisis Is Only In Its Beginning Stages

Many, including Russia’s President Putin, have asked why the US launched an illegal attack on Syria prior to the chemical weapons inspectors examining the site of the alleged chemical attack.

This popular question completely misses the point. The US attack on Syria is a clear and indisputable war crime against a sovereign country regardless of whether Syria used a chemical weapon in driving the Washington supported terrorists from Douma. No one acted to stop Washington’s war crime. Some of Washington’s vassals, such as Germany and Italy, refused to participate in Washington’s war crime, but no one attempted to block it. The impotent UN Security Council, to which Russia is wasting its time appealing, the EU, NATO, Russia and China themselves did nothing to stop Washington’s Nazi era war crime.

Russia said that if Washington’s attack harmed its citizens, there would be military consequences, but Russia did not protect its ally Syria from the attack.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter as Washington’s attack was carefully conducted so as to have no effect except to serve as a face-saver for Trump. Apparently no one was killed and no damage was done to anything real except to a facility in which anti-venom for snake bites was being produced.

On the other hand, it does matter, because of the perception that the American presstitutes have created that it was a great victory for America over the evil Syrian government and the evil Russian government that supports them. This perception, which the presstitutes have created with their fake news, justifies the war crime and will lead to more attacks on Syria.

It is unlikely that the UN Security Council will condemn Washington, which pays 25% of the UN’s budget. Moreover, the Security Council is loaded up with Washington’s vassals, and they will not vote to censure their liegelord. Putin is wasting his time taking the matter to the Security Council, unless his purpose is to prove that every Western institution is completely corrupt. As most informed people already know this, I don’t understand the point of proving the known. Putin should read Eric Zuesse’s article before he puts too much faith in the UN. https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/04/17/how-us-has-virtually-destroyed-un.html

As I have written on a number of occasions, I admire Putin’s Christian character of sidestepping the beatings he continuously takes from Washington in order to save the world from the massive deaths of a world war. The problem is that by turning the other cheek, Putin encourages more aggression from Washington. Putin is dealing with neoconservative psychopaths. He is not dealing with common sense.

During the entirety of the Cold War no US ambassador to the UN spoke aggressively and disrespectfully to the Soviet representative as Nikki Haley speaks to the Russian ambassador. During the Cold War no American president would have tolerated Nikki Haley. The crazed bitch would have instantly been fired.

The Russian government is captured by delusion if the Russians believe that the US government, in which Nikki Haley is Trump’s choice to be America’s spokesperson to the world, in which the crazed neoconservative war monger John Bolton is a principal influence over US military and foreign policy, and in which the President himself is under threat of indictment for wanting to normalize relations with Russia, has any prospect of avoiding war.

The best chance of preventing the oncoming war is Russian-Chinese-Iranian unity and a defeat for American arms in a regional context not worth the Washington psychopaths launching of nuclear weapons. Until Washington is effectively resisted, Washington’s European vassals, the UN Security Council and the OPCW will stand with Washington. Once Washington experiences a defeat, NATO will dissolve and with this dissolution Washington’s ability to threaten other countries will lose its cover and evaporate.

British Intelligence Behind “Russiagate”

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hendersonlefthook.wordpress.com

Dean Henderson

April 19, 2018

When President Donald Trump said in March 2017 that GCHQ  (Government Communications Headquarters) was monitoring Trump Tower, he was right.  The initial claim, made on Fox & Friends by senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano, was ridiculed by Establishment media and Fox soon backed away from the story.

GCHQ officially works for “Her Majesty’s Government”, alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and MI5.  In 2013 Edward Snowden revealed that GCHQ was behind Tempora, a program to monitor online & phone data in the UK.

GCHQ sits at the head of the Five Eyes Intelligence alliance, which includes agencies in the UK, US, Canada, Australia & New Zealand.  All are members of the Crown, with the ostensible exception of the US.  Five Eyes also operates Project Echelon, which analyzes data from all communications worldwide.

Michael Wolff claims in his book Fire & Fury: Inside the Trump White House, that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Trump that there was a possibility, “that the British had had the Trump campaign staff under surveillance, monitoring its telephone calls and other communications and possibly even Trump himself”.  Blair, of course, denies this claim.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal reinforces the likelihood that GCHQ was not only monitoring Trump, but attempting to swing the election in his favor. (https://hendersonlefthook.wordpress.com/2018/03/20/cambridge-analyticas-facebook-mi6-psyop/).

Special Counsel Robert Mueller could very well be an MI6 operative.  Mueller has a history of covering up Crown crimes, including the BCCI and BNL scandals. (https://hendersonlefthook.wordpress.com/2017/11/01/dnc-fraud-against-sanders-robert-mueller-bcci/).

The purpose of the probe is to pressure Trump to remain antagonistic towards Russia.  This serves Crown interests by keeping the US and Russia divided.  Thus the carefully-selected named “Russiagate”.

But while important actors in this propaganda drama are indeed Russian, a closer look reveals their animosity towards Putin and their allegiance to the Freemason Crown.  Nowhere is this more obvious that in the case of the much-ballyhooed but little-investigated Alfa Bank, which did indeed have servers communicating with those of the Trump campaign.

The implication in the Establishment media is that somehow Alfa Bank is a tool of Vladimir Putin.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Though Putin long ago declared war on the Russian oligarchs who helped MI6 destroy his country in 1998, Illuminati media still conflates Putin with the oligarch for propaganda purposes.

In 1997 Putin launched an investigation into Alfa Bank.  His FSB found that Alfa was working with Chechen crime families to facilitate the drug trade in that region and later in Kosovo.  Alfa was also working with Dick Cheney’s Halliburton and its subsidiary Brown & Root in constructing pipelines through the disputed Chechnya/Dagestan region.  Both these actions were subversive to the Russian state.

In 1999 Alfa took over Marc Rich Holdings from the fugitive financier of same name.  Rich was convicted of tax evasion and had worked with Bruce Rappaport and Reagan CIA director Bill Casey in their project to undermine the Soviet Union.  Alfa was an important partner in those efforts.  President Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich just before leaving office.

Alfa Bank is owned by Alfa Group Consortium, which has interests in oil & gas among other things.  Owners Mikhael Fridman and German Khan both have extensive ties to Ukraine and likely had a hand in manipulating the rise of Petro Poroshenko to power in that the MI6 coup in that country.

Three more coincidences: (1 Cambridge Analytica bragged of using Ukrainian prostitutes to rig elections and organ trafficking has become an epidemic there.  (2 The European oil and commodity trading arm of Alfa Group is named Crown Resources.  (3 Alfa Group international trading director Alexei Kuzmichov founded the Babylon Project in 2002.  The group played a major role in “restoring” the National Museum of Iraq, which was conveniently looted of significant Sumerian/Annunaki artifacts one year later in 2003.

Fridman, Khan and the fourth Alfa insider Petr Aven are all Jewish.  Fridman and Khan are dual Israeli citizens, while Aven was appointed by Russian President Boris Yeltsin to make the ruble convertible.  Soon after Aven and the Goldman Sachs boys accomplished this, the ruble crashed.

A fire sale on formerly state-owned Russian assets followed, with Big Oil, Wall Street & their Russian oligarch partners all feeding heavily at the trough of privatization.  Since then, President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly gone after this Russia/Israeli mafia, jailing and deporting many of them.

Because of this, Alfa Bank now operates mostly from Ukraine.  Mikhail Fridman has virtually cut all ties with Russia and has applied for permanent residency in…wait for it…the UK.  Khan also holds a Ukrainian passport and is involved with TNK Oil, which in 2003 formed a 50-50 joint venture with…wait for it…British Petroleum, in what was the biggest foreign investment in Russia.  Putin has since kicked BP out of Russia.

It is obvious that the same devils who recently brought us the fake Skripal poisoning and the fake gas attacks in Syria, are also behind Russiagate.  British Intelligence, in service of the Rothschild City of London bankers and the Crown, will continue to sew mayhem and chaos around the world, as they have done for centuries, unless we decode the biggest lie of all.

The British Empire never died.  It just got very good at quietly sitting in the background while its surrogates do all the dirty work.

Dean Henderson is the author of five books: Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network, The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries, Das Kartell der Federal Reserve, Stickin’ it to the Matrix & The Federal Reserve Cartel.  You can subscribe free to his weekly Left Hook column @www.hendersonlefthook.wordpress.com

Swiss Governmental Lab identifies the Substance used on the Skripal case as being linked to…NATO?

http://www.greanvillepost.com

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Posted by Addison dePitt

Ron Ridenour

April 16, 2018

MAKE SURE YOU CIRCULATE THESE MATERIALS! BREAKING THE EMPIRE’S PROPAGANDA MACHINE DEPENDS ON YOU.

UPDATE: Prefatory note by the author

---

I THINK THE BELOW IS SELF-EVIDENT.

The West is exerting maximum pressure to keep the lid on the big lie regarding the Skripal false flag and later, as that had begun to fall apart, due to its transparent fraudulence and numerous contradictions, the chemical weapons putative attack in Douma. Chemical weapons, as expressed by other reporters and geopolitical analysts, are being used as the favorite bugaboo to inflame passions among the public, given their horrific effects, but it should be recalled that the world today has many other types of horrendous articles of death, from drones firing missiles that turn a human body into a mangled pile of bloody gel to conventional mortar shells, not to mention more exotic weapons in every major superpower arsenal, many of which are being used by the West and its client states, as we witness in Yemen. The whole thing reeks of hypocrisy.

Timeline
At 15:50 April 16, I called the OPCW public affairs phone number (31-704163242) and spoke to a “Jamie”; surname not given. I asked about the April 12 OPCW executive summary report to the public in which it was written:

“The results of the 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.” https://www.opcw.org/news/article/opcw-issues-report-on-technical-assistance-requested-by-the-united-kingdom/

No more. Nothing stated about whether the poison was only novichok or could it have had other elements, such as the NATO-produced BZ, as the Russian government contends and about which Dr. Andrea Galli wrote.

“Jamie” would not answer my question. He said: “This is protected information. Our full report only goes to the 192 member states”.

Question: “Does this mean that Russia’s statement that BZ was an element was correct or not?”

“No comment”.

We went around this a bit and then he asked why I kept asking him. I answered: “Because I am concerned about what the facts are and so should you be, because what really happened could either be an excuse to start a world war or be confirmation that there is no excuse at all to war, and that is clearly related to what did or did not happen in Douma, Syria on April 7.”

“No comment.”

—Ron Ridenour

Swiss Governmental Lab identifies the Substance used on the Skripal case as being linked to NATO?

Dr. Andrea Galli (Swiss investigator at Swiss East Affairs)

April15, 2018

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Britain has accused Russia of carrying out an attempted assassination of the ex-double-agent Mr Skripal using nerve agents belonging to the Novichok group. Mr Skripal was found unconscious with his 33-year-old daughter on a park bench on 4 March in Salisbury, with medical staff later determining they had been exposes to a nerve agent. Ms Skripal is recovering from the attack after being discharged from hospital on Monday. Mr Skripal remains ill in hospital. The incident has exacerbated a major crisis between Russia and the west.The Swiss Institute for the Protection of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Weapons (Schweizerisches Institut für ABC-Schutz, www.labor-spiez.ch) is a world-renowned swiss governmental run centre of excellence in the domain of WMD forensic analysis. It proceeded to analyse the substance found at Salisbury at the request of the OPCW. Lavrov said he received confidential results from Switzerland’s government-run Lab.

According to the report of the Swiss Lab the poison found at Salisbury by OPCW investigators looking into the Skripal affair, there are traces of the toxic agent 3-Quinuclidinyl Benzilate and traces of A-234 – one of the nerve agents of the novichok group – in its original form and in a concentration that would have killed the Skripals, not explaining the clinical picture of the Skripals. However, the presence of 3-Quinuclidinyl Benzilate explains the clinical picture of the Skripals.

3-Quinuclidinyl Benzilate was developed and weaponized in the 1960s as a new chemical agent for battlefield use as a psychochemical and assigned the NATO code Agent BZ.

Agent BZ is a NATO nerve-poisoning agent and a nonlethal chemical weapon that can render the enemy too irritable to fight but has unpredictable effects. While nonfatal, agent BZ causes a wide array of potentially incapacitating symptoms in its victims: soldiers can become disoriented or even experience hallucinations, according to a U.S. Army manual from 1963 that can be obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

“The incapacitating agent BZ munitions give the commander a capability to apply a nonlethal force in selected situations,” the document explains.

Less than 1 mg of BZ takes 30-60 minutes to act and can produce acute brain syndrome, characterized by delirium lasting for 3–5 days, which can be reversed by physostigmine and other anticholinesterases. Chemical agents that consistently produce changes in thought, perception and mood, without causing any major disturbances in the autonomic nervous system or other serious disability, are classified as psychomimetic agents. It is a psychedelics group of substance that includes a large variety of compounds. Among them, LSD is the most well known member.

What is now with the sanctions against Russia since they have never worked on this type of substance? The laboratory did not immediately respond to the claims, which came late Saturday afternoon. An insider with access to the Swiss-lab has confirmed on Sunday 15, April the results cited by Lavrov.

The Skripal case, as well as the recent alleged use of chemical weapons by Russian ally Syria, has placed world focus on the use of chemical weapons, culminating in a Western missile strike on a series of targets in Syria.

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Final Note

The above information was on the internet and on Modern Diplomacy’s website at 13:30 April 16 when our correspondent in Northern Europe found it and downloaded it to his documents. At 14:00, when he looked again the materials were gone from Google and from the Modern Diplomacy website. Instead, people now get a 404. Curiously, it is only this page that has been affected, the rest of Modern Diplomacy appears to be operating normally.

https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2018/04/15/swiss-governmental-lab-identifies-the-substance-used-on-the-skripal-case-as-being-linked-to-the-nato/

 

Ron Ridenour, journalists and activist, is the author of six books on Cuba including: “Backfire: The CIA’s Biggest Burn”, Cuba Beyond the Crossroads with Theodore MacDonald, and Cuba at Sea, plus other books such as “Yankee Sandinistas“, “Sounds of Venezuela”, and “Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka”. He has lived and worked in Latin America including in Cuba 1988-96 (Cuba’s Editorial José Martí and Prensa Latina), and in Denmark, Iceland, Japan, and India. www.ronridenour.com; email: ronrorama@gmail.com.