“Johnson is a caricature of what a political leader is supposed to be, a self-promoting serial liar, an embarrassment to previous offices held.”
“He’s the perfect encapsulation of all of the vices…of the upper-class English elite” — indifferent to the rights and welfare of ordinary Brits.”
“Besides favoring tax cuts for the rich and business, he wants Brits paying more for healthcare, along with calling for putting 20,000 more cops on the beat to fight “crime” and being tough on aliens from the wrong countries.”
“In declaring his candidacy earlier, he vowed to cut taxes for wealthy Brits and corporations — at a time surveys show most Brits oppose years of force-fed austerity, wanting higher taxes, extra revenue used for improved social services.”
Boris Johnson succeeded Theresa May as new Tory prime minister – chosen by Britain’s power elite, ordinary Brits having no say over their new leader.
UK democracy in action resembles America’s — pure fantasy, not the real thing.
Johnson is a caricature of what a political leader is supposed to be, a self-promoting serial liar, an embarrassment to previous offices held.
In public statements, he bashed Russia like his predecessors, abandoning reason, logic, facts, and common sense.
Johnson and Theresa May, along with other UK and US Russophobes, concocted the Skripal poisoning incident the Kremlin had nothing to do with.
Instead of responsibly seeking improved relations with Moscow, they used the incident to heighten tensions more than already.
Johnson is Britain’s Nikki Haley with gender difference. He earlier compared Putin to Hitler.
Haley has US 2024 presidential ambitions. The possibility should terrify everyone — a neocon extremist, geopolitical know-nothing Hillary clone without her years of political experience on the world stage.
Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone earlier called Johnson “the most hardline right-wing ideologue since Thatcher…a fairly lazy tosser who just wants to be there.”
He’s supremely unqualified for the post he now holds. It’s his to compound the mess he inherited.
Russian Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Konstantin Kosachev slammed him, saying:
“British politics is in for gales and earthquakes, I dare suggest. And the British-Russian relations are in for the same old cemetery despair they have been plunged into by Johnson and the like. It’s going to be no fun.”
His hardline extremism and eccentricities “manifested itself in full when he was foreign secretary and is unlikely to fade away now.”
Kosachev’s State Duma counterpart Leonid Slutsky was just as disappointed about Johnson’s ascension to power, saying:
“As for relations with Russia, one can hardly expect drastic changes for the better.”
He was foreign secretary “during the unprecedented anti-Russian campaign over the so-called poisoning” of Sergey and Yulia Skripal, falsely blamed on Moscow.
“(H)e did his utmost to promote that political theater and reduce Russian-British relations to zero.”
According to journalist Dave Hill, he’s “a unique figure in British politics, an unprecedented blend of comedian, conman, faux subversive showman, and populist media confection.”
Biographer Sonia Purnell described his public persona as “brand Boris,” adding he’s “a manic self-promoter (with) a good deal of bravado…the most unconventional…politician of the post-Blair era.”
Former UK deputy PM Nick Clegg once said he’s “like Donald Trump with a thesaurus.” Their demagogic self-promotion, bombast, bravado and arrogance are similar.
Johnson is like DJT with a British accent and smoother presentation. Former MP/imperial critic George Galloway said “(y)ou’d have to…be British and…mad (to believe he’s) the answer to Britain’s now rather critical problems,” adding:
“He’s the perfect encapsulation of all of the vices…of the upper-class English elite” — indifferent to the rights and welfare of ordinary Brits
“Like his hero Winston Churchill, he believes history will treat him kindly because HE intends to write it.”
He and Trump are warlords, hostile to peace, equity and justice — essential qualities for public office in the West, social democrats shunned.
He drips racism and misogyny, calling Blacks “piccaninnies (with) watermelon smiles” and Muslim women “letter boxes.”
According to a non-random sample of 70,000 London Guardian readers, “(w)omen are more likely than men to view Boris Johnson as dishonest, xenophobic and politically calculating…97% of women and 96% of men (consider him) “repellently dishonest.”
At an early July Tory leadership gathering, he was questioned about his “arguably racist” remarks in newspaper columns he wrote.
Columnist Patrick Cockburn suggested his ascension to prime minister amounted to “a soft coup.”
He was chosen by 160,000 Tory members, a minute fraction of the UK electorate. Following his selection, the London Guardian said “the clown is crowned as the country burns in hell.”
“Elected by a staggering 0.2% of the nation, (it’s far from) the will of the people.” And by the way, the acronym for his “Deliver, Unite, Defeat” campaign slogan is DUD.
In a pitch to become prime minister, he made a “do of die” pledge to leave the EU by October 31.
Preferring to avoid a no-deal Brexit, he said “(i)t would be absolutely bizarre to signal at this stage that the UK government was willing once again to run-up the white flag and delay yet again.”
Much can happen between now and then. Like Trump and other Western politicians, Johnson time and again says one thing and goes another way.
He slammed Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, calling him and likeminded followers part of a “Marxist cabal…a real threat to our fundamental values and our way of life,” adding:
As prime minister, he’ll “protect this country from the red-toothed, red-clawed socialism.” Like most Western politicians, he supports privilege over beneficial social change.
In declaring his candidacy earlier, he vowed to cut taxes for wealthy Brits and corporations — at a time surveys show most Brits oppose years of force-fed austerity, wanting higher taxes, extra revenue used for improved social services.
On Wednesday, Johnson begins his tenure as prime minister. The good news is Theresa May is gone. The bad news is he’ll likely continue the worst of her policies and add his own.
Besides favoring tax cuts for the rich and business, he wants Brits paying more for healthcare, along with calling for putting 20,000 more cops on the beat to fight “crime” and being tough on aliens from the wrong countries.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif tweeted the following after Johnson’s selection as prime minister, saying:
“The May govt’s seizure of Iranian oil at behest of US is piracy, pure & simple.
I congratulate my former counterpart, @BorisJohnson on becoming UK PM.
Iran does not seek confrontation. But we have 1500 miles of Persian Gulf coastline. These are our waters & we will protect them.”
Johnson is no friend of Iran, earlier urging ways to restrain what he called its “disruptive behavior (sic).”
In a leadership debate earlier this month, he said “I am not going to pretend that the mullahs of Tehran are easy people to deal with (sic) or that they are anything other than a disruptive, dangerous, difficult regime (sic). They certainly are (sic),” adding:
“But…if you asked me whether I think we should now, were I to be prime minister now, would I be supporting military action against Iran? Then the answer is no.”
No can become yes on numerous issues when US hardliners come calling.
Johnson no doubt will keep the US/UK special relationship intact, especially on geopolitical issues.
Judge them by their actions. Both countries are hostile toward Iran. That’s not likely to change with him at No. 10.
How will he get along with Trump personally? He’s on the record as London mayor, saying the following in response to private citizen Trump’s remark in 2015 about “no-go” zones in the city where police won’t go because of Muslim extremists, saying:
Trump demonstrated “a quite stupefying ignorance that makes him, frankly, unfit to hold the office of president of the United States.”
He was the first senior UK politician to state this view. Trump is easily irritated when criticized.
If he’s made aware of Johnson’s remark or remembers it when made, it may not make for an easy relationship.
*
Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
The New York Times, in early December 2018, ran a 5000-word article outlining how Russian propaganda, supported by independent media, has destroyed America’s understanding of what is real and true. This time I wasn’t cited personally as last year when Newsweek, the Washington Post, Politico and The Hill named me as a Russian agent.
Endless hours with Federal investigators began to recreate a sense of reality. They genuinely began to understand that they are the ones who have been the victims, fed a narrative of lies for years. It was heartening.
In particular, the times went after the downing of MH17, the Skripal poisoning, or whatever it was, various gas attacks, the alleged election rigging, blaming Russia for making it hard for them to get their version out and believed.
For my part, I rely on my experience not just as a journalist or diplomat but in over three decades in the intelligence community.
Let’s take MH17. I was personally involved in negotiations with the Malaysian government to set up a task force to independently investigate. The Dutch investigators were, according to Malaysia, predetermined to blame Russia. A team was assembled, including me and former FBI, a top DC law firm and others at VT but Malaysia was threatened by the US that if they began this effort, the United States would economically retaliate.
I have all the documents and correspondence, it’s not like this kind of thing doesn’t happen every day. We always ask, who benefits? The answer was easy, the extremists who had taken power in Ukraine and rogue members of military organizations with facilities in Azerbaijan and elsewhere. Intelligence had long since sited a conspiracy behind the downing of MH17 and the Malaysian government was the primary victim but had been extorted, threatened, cowed into backing down from seeking justice.
Let’s now look at al-Qaeda. It isn’t just an assertion that there is no such thing as al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden’s American handler is a close friend. I know the top Pakistani intelligence and military officials from the time and went over this with them as well including ISI Director General Hamid Gul, an editor at Veterans Today for nearly a decade.
It was always the same, the CIA formed al Qaeda and there never was a worldwide terror group that broke away and began targeting the United States. Take, for instance, al Qaeda in Yemen.
There were meetings, years ago, on how to justify more American involvement in the region. The decision was made to name some tribes in Yemen “al Qaeda,” tribes randomly picked. Then the GWOT (Global War on Terror) could pour funds into Yemen and aid Saudi interference in their affairs, something going on to this day.
As a side note, it was 18 months ago that Veterans Today asserted that the US was arming and fueling Saudi planes bombing civilians in Yemen. Only a few days ago, it was announced, finally, that the US had been doing it illegally with American funding “off the books.” Imagine, who deserves money less than Saudi Arabia, particularly in their efforts to murder civilians using their American weapons?
We can move on to the Syrian gas attacks. Russian media was accused of making up wild conspiracy theories to justify their aiding Syria in randomly gassing Syrian citizens, even in areas under government control, for no reason whatsoever other than “this is what Russians do.”
How do you fight logic like that particularly when it is presented with absolutely no evidence whatsoever?
This is the New York Times, but it is also the Trump administration. Do note that the Obama administration had never attacked the Damascus government.
We could move on to the Skripal “event.” It is easy to see why it would be in the American news. Imagine the most potent poison imaginable, VX gas, something the US and Israel had produced for years and still store away, according to our sources, in Romania, Georgia and Southern Libya.
However, when a former Russian “spy” named Skripal and his daughter became ill, and I suggest food poisoning or something similar, it had to be Russia and it had to be “Novachuk,” the Russian chemical agent made famous in Call of Duty video games.
Problem is, the Skripals survived and, in fact, there is no evidence they were ever ill in the first place. There are no records of medical care, nothing presented anywhere, no chemical analysis and the other “fact,” as it were, that VX kills in less than 3 seconds 100% of the time.
Both Skripals are alive and well.
Then there is the curious fact that dragging on this story took the Saudi/Trump involvement in the strangling and dismemberment of a Washington Post correspondent named Khashoggi out of the media. Even the CIA says Saudi Arabia did it and their intercepts say it was on the direct order of the Saudi crown prince, commonly known as MBS.
Then again, it is the Trump regime paying for fueling Saudi planes bombing Yemen and the Trump family with a recent $800 million contract in Saudi Arabia for projects that don’t seem to involve anything more than money going to Jared Kushner for doing nothing. Nothing is to be built or managed, only a contract for Saudi Arabia to pay the Trumps almost a billion dollars for unnamed services.
Is Trump being paid to gas up Saudi planes terrorizing Yemen?
What we have are accusations and assertions by a press organization, one of many that seem to act “on demand” to maintain a fake narrative.
The press never asks “why.” They don’t care. They report what they are told to report, make up sources, never complain about lack of proof and now cry like babies when nobody believes them.
For those who actually sit in the meetings, who looked at the documents, the radar tracking and interviewed witnesses on MH17 and other events, the press suffers a shameful lack of interest in reality.
For instance, only a few days ago it turned out that one district in North Carolina had actually counted votes prior to an election, not just early ballots but came up with totals prior to voting. That story was removed from the mainstream media only hours after it was reported.
It was Trump’s party that was involved but news organizations supposedly opposed to Trump covered it up, as they always do. Is the whole thing, the war on the press, all fake or mostly fake? It is certainly fake the only question is how fake?
Then again, there is this unpleasant reality. Those who govern, those who report, those who make war, those who profit, those who bleed the world dry on behalf of the mischief makers are people seldom burdened with issues of morality or values.
We say “seldom,” not “never.”
Each issue can be understood easy enough. There are facts, there are motives, there is evidence. None of these are ever referred to or discussed, only “belief” and “opinion.”
Belief and opinion are so very subject to manipulation and control and with that the debasement of humanity and the cycle of entropy, war, poverty, starvation and fear. In the end, one question lives above all others, who profits? It will never be asked.
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
The official story, says the expert, is “stupidity on stupidity.”
I agree with him.
The question is: Why did the British government think that they could get away with such an obvious hoax? The answer is that the people in Western countries don’t know anything about anything. They live in a world in which their reality is a product of the propaganda fed to them by “news organizations” and Hollywood movies. They only receive controlled explanations. Therefore, they know nothing about how anything really functions. Read the account by the Israeli expert to understand the vast difference between the British government’s hoax and the reality of how an assassination is conducted.
The Israeli expert got me to wondering why the British government thought anyone would fall for such a transparently false story. Having just read David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth’s new book, 9/11 Unmasked, and David Ray Griffin’s 2017 book, Bush and Cheney: How They Runed America and the World, the answer became obvious. The British government had watched the idiot Western populations fall for the official 9/11 conspiracy story in which a few Saudi Arabians, who could not fly airplanes and without the support of any intelligence agency, caused the entire security apparatus ot the United States to fail utterly, and no one was held responsible for the total failure. The British government concluded that anyone who could possibly believe such an obviously false story would believe anything.
I remember coming to that conclusion years ago before the official conspiracy theory in the 9/11 Commission Report was blown to pieces by thousands of scientists, structural engineers, high-rise architects, military and civilian pilots, first responders on the scene, and a large number of former high government officials both in the US and abroad.
At first I did not connect the zionist neoconservatives’ plot, outlined in their public writings (for example, Norman Podhorttz in Commentary) to destroy 7 Middle Eastern countries in five years (also described by General Wesley Clark) and their statement that they needed a “new Pearl Harbor” to implement their plan, with the attack on the World Trade Center. But as I watched the twin towers blow up floor by floor it was completely obvious that these were not builldings falling down due to asymetrical structural damage and limited, low temperature office fires that probably did not even warm the massive steel structure to the point of being warm to the touch. When you watch the videos you see buildings blowing up. It is as clear as day. You see each floor blow. You see steel beams and other debris fly out the sides as projectiles. It is amazing that any human is so completely stupid as to think what he is seeing with his own eyes are buildings falling down from structural damage. But it required many years before half of the American people realized that the official account was pure bullshit.
Today polls indicate that a majority of people do not believe the official 9/11 propaganda any more than they believe the Warren Commission Report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the alleged Gulf of Tonkin attack, or the report from Admiral McCain (father of John) erasing Israel’s responsibility for the destruction of the USS Liberty and its crew during LBJ’s administration, or that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, or Iran had nukes, or the many lies about Syria, Libya’s Gaddafi, or Somalia, or Yemen, or the “Russian invasion of Georgia,” the “Russian invasion of Ukraine.” But at each time the idiot population, no matter how many times they had learned that the governments lied to them initially believed the next lie, thereby permitting the lie to become fact. Thus, the idiot Western populations created their own world of controlled explanations.
Only a deranged person could believe anything any Western government says. But the Western world has a huge number of deranged people. There are plenty of them to validate the next official lie. The ignorant fools make it possible for Western governments to continue their policy of lies that are driving the world to extinction in a war with Russia and China.
Perhaps I am being too hard on the insouciant Western populations. Ron Unz is no moron. Yet he accepted the transparently false 9/11 story until he started to pay attention. Once he paid attention, he realized it was false. http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-911-conspiracy-theories/
Like myself, Ron Unz has noticed that the 9/11 Truth movement has succeeded in totally discrediting the official 9/11 story. But the unanswered question remains: Who did it?
Unz says it was Israel, not Bush & Cheney. This is also the position of Christopher Bollyn. It seems certain that Israel was involved. We have the fact of the Mossad agents caught celebrating as they filmed the collalpse of the WTC towers. Obviously, they knew in advance and were set up ready to film. Later they were shown on Israeli TV where they stated that they had been sent to film the destruction of the buildings.
We also have the fact of the large profits made by someone that the US government continues to protect on shorting the stock of the airlines, the planes of which were allegedly hijacked.
In other words, the 9/11 attack was known in advance, as was the destruction of WTC building 7 as evidenced by the BBC reporter standing in front of the still standing building announcing its destruction about a half hour before it occurred.
Unz and Bollyn’s case against Israel is powerful. I agree with Unz that George W. Bush was not part of the plot. If he had been, he would have been on the scene directing America’s heroic response to the first, and only, terrorist attack on America. instead, Bush was moved out of the way, and kept out of the way, while Cheney handled the situation.
I understand what Unz is doing by focusing attention on the main beneficiary of the hoax 9/11 story. However Cheney and his corporation, Halliburton, also benefited. Halliburton received large munificent US government contracts for services in Afghanistan and Iraq. Cheney, as David Ray Griffen proves, achieved his aim of elevating the executive branch above the US Constitution and statutory US law.
Moreover, it was impossible for Mossad to pull off such an attack without high level support in the US government. Only a US official could have ordered the numerous simulations of the attack underway in order to confuse the air traffic controllers and the US Air Force.
The Israeli government could not have ordered the destruction of the crime scene, opposed by the New York fire marshal as a felony. This required US government authority. The steel beams, which showed all sorts of distortions that could only have been caused by nano-thermite were quickly sent to Asia for reprocessing. The intense fires and molten rubble in the buildings’ remains six weeks after their collapse never received an official explanation. To this day, no one has explained how low-temperature, smothered office fires that burned for one hour or less melted or weakened massive steel beams and produced molten steel six weeks afterward.
Unz is correct that Israel made out like a bandit. Israel as a result of 9/11 got rid of half of the constraints on its expansion. Only Syria and Iran remain, and the Trump regime is pushing hard for Israel, even against Russia, a government that at its will can completely destroy the United States and Israel, something that much of the world wishes would happen.
Unz is correct that right now the totally evil and corrupt US and Israeli governments have the entire world on the path to extinction. However, he omits American responsibility, that of the evil Dick Cheney, the Zionist neoconservatives who are Israel’s Fifth Column in America, and the utter insouciance of the American people who do not show enough intelligence or awareness to warrant their survival.
“Not only did the United States, and France for that matter, provide chemical weapons to the Saddam regime, but the U.S. intelligence agencies provided the Iraqi military with vital battlefield intelligence, including satellite imagery in aiding them in the war. The U.S. was well aware that the Saddam regime had used chemical weapons in at least four offensives during the war. Of course they knew, they had facilitated the transfer of these weapons to help the Iraqis prosecute a war of aggression against Iran. Declassified CIA documents clearly show that the United States was well aware that the Iraqis had used chemical weapons at least four times between 1983 and 1988.”
The US currently maintains the largest stockpile of both chemical and biological warfare agents of any nation on the planet, and continues to expand its biological weapons research and development on a scale far larger than any other country.
The world is once again witnessing the height of U.S. hypocrisy as members of the U.S. State Department ratchet up anti-Russian and anti-Syrian rhetoric surrounding the use of chemical weapons in Syria and the UK. Ambassador Nikki Haley has warned Syria, Iran and Russia that they will be held accountable for their pre-determined use of chemical weapons in Idlib on innocent civilians. No evidence was provided to support her threats. The United States carried out cruise missile strikes on two previous occasions, and each time provided no evidence to prove their assertion that the Syrian government used chemical weapons in attacking civilians, nor was any rational reason given for such an obviously irrational decision on the part of the Syrian state. No evidence has ever been provided to justify the clear international crime of aggression committed by the United States on these two earlier occasions. Now, the UK and the U.S. are both attempting to accuse the Russian government of using chemical weapons in an alleged attempted assassination of a Russian national on UK soil. Once again, no real evidence has been presented, only assertions and hearsay.
On Thursday September 13th, Assistant Secretary of State Manisha Singh declared before the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee that the United States would level the most severe of sanctions against Russia, including breaking all diplomatic ties, if Russia refused to admit its guilt in perpetrating the Skripal assassination fiasco and refused to submit to International inspections by the OPCW of its alleged chemical weapons and biological weapons programs. She stated that Russia would have to meet this requirement by an arbitrary November 4th deadline, set by the United States in accordance with a U.S. law, not an international law. H.R. 1724 – Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 specifies in part:
Title III: Control and Elimination of Chemical and Biological Weapons – Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 – Declares it is U.S. policy to: (1) seek multilaterally coordinated efforts with other countries to control the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons; and (2) strengthen efforts to control chemical agents, precursors, and equipment.
Requires the President to use the U.S. export control laws to control the export of defense articles, defense services, goods, and technologies that he determines would assist a country in acquiring the capability to produce or use such weapons.
Amends the Export Administration Act of 1979 to require the Secretary of Commerce to establish a list of goods and technology that would assist a foreign government or group in acquiring chemical or biological weapons. Requires a validated export license for the export of such items to certain countries of concern.
Requires the President to impose certain sanctions against foreign persons if he determines that they knowingly contributed to the efforts of a country to acquire, use, or stockpile chemical or biological weapons. Declares such sanctions to include: (1) denial of U.S. procurement contracts for goods or services from such foreign persons; and (2) prohibition against importation of products from such persons. Authorizes the President to waive imposition of such sanctions if he determines that is in the national security interests of the United States.
Amends the Arms Export Control Act to set forth similar provisions.
Requires the President to make a determination with respect to whether a country has used chemical or biological weapons in violation of international law or has used lethal chemical or biological weapons against its own nationals. Authorizes specified congressional committees to request the President to make such determination with respect to the use of such weapons.
Requires the President to impose the following sanctions against foreign countries that have been found to have used such weapons: (1) termination of assistance under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (except humanitarian assistance and agricultural commodities); (2) termination of arms sales and arms sales financing; (3) denial of U.S. credit; and (4) prohibition of the export of certain goods and technology. Directs the President to impose at least three of the following additional sanctions unless such countries cease the use of such weapons and provide assurances that they will not use, and will allow inspections with respect to, such weapons: (1) opposition to the extension of multilateral development bank assistance; (2) prohibition of U.S. bank loans (except loans for food or agricultural commodities); (3) further export prohibitions; (4) import restrictions; (5) suspension of diplomatic relations; and (6) termination of air carrier landing rights. Provides for the removal and waiver of such sanctions.
Requires the President to submit to the Congress annual reports on the efforts of countries to acquire chemical or biological weapons.
Repeals certain duplicative provisions of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1992 and 1993.”
It is important to note that nowhere in this law is there a legal commitment made by the United States itself, to eliminate its own chemical and biological weapons capabilities. This is not an oversight, yet speaks to the imperial hypocrisy of the United States and an acknowledgement that it alone has been the largest perpetrator of chemical weapons use and proliferation for more than 50 years. It currently maintains the largest stockpile of both chemical and biological warfare agents of any nation on the planet, and continues to expand its biological weapons research and development on a scale far larger than any other country.
While the U.S. Department of Defense maintains that its massive biological research programs are meant to counter and defend against new biological weapons being developed, they are in fact developing bio-weapons in the process.
International Obligations and the OPCW
Russia is one of 192 signatories (state and non-state parties) of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, along with the United States. On September 27th, 2017 it was announced by Russia and the OPCW, that Russia had verified the total destruction of its large chemical weapons stockpile dating from the years of the Soviet Union, estimated at 39,967 metric tons of chemical agents. Russia was obligated to do this by 2020, yet was able to accomplish the task three years ahead of schedule. Under the original agreement, both the U.S. and Russia were obligated to accomplish this by 2007, but both nations required an extension of the deadline.
Although admitting to a total stockpile of 28,000 metric tons of chemical agents, the U.S. admits to destroying 90% of its chemical arsenal. The U.S. requested and was granted an extension out to 2023 to achieve verified elimination of 100% of its chemical weapons. The only other signatory of the law other than the United States not to have already met the requirements is Iraq. It must be stated that much of the chemical weapons in the Iraqi arsenal are based on the chemical warfare agents supplied to the Saddam Hussein regime during the height of the Iran-Iraq war by the United States and other western nations. Saddam used some of these U.S. supplied weapons to murder thousands of Iraqi Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1988. Estimates range between 3,000 – 7,000 deaths and over 10,000 injured.
Saddam Hussein was a valued asset of the United States and its Western allies for decades. Hussein pictured above with former French President Jacque Chirac and U.S Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Not only did the United States, and France for that matter, provide chemical weapons to the Saddam regime, but the U.S. intelligence agencies provided the Iraqi military with vital battlefield intelligence, including satellite imagery in aiding them in the war. The U.S. was well aware that the Saddam regime had used chemical weapons in at least four offensives during the war. Of course they knew, they had facilitated the transfer of these weapons to help the Iraqis prosecute a war of aggression against Iran. Declassified CIA documents clearly show that the United States was well aware that the Iraqis had used chemical weapons at least four times between 1983 and 1988. Iran had accused Iraq of using chemical weapons, and tried to build a case to bring before the United Nations. The United States withheld its knowledge of course, and continued to aid its ally in perpetrating these crimes against humanity.
Perhaps the most powerful photo taken of the Halabja chemical attack perpetrated against Iraqi Kurds. This woman died running with her child in an attempt to save her, yet could not escape the deadly effects of the chemical agents used. Their embrace will forever symbolize both human love and sacrifice, and unfathomable human cruelty.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley has lied through her teeth repeatedly in her statements before the U.N. Security Council and the General Assembly. She has stated repeatedly that Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people in Ghouta in 2013, Khan Shaykhun in 2017 and Douma in 2018, yet has not supplied one shred of evidence beyond dubious social media posts of unknown provenance. She has also stated that the United States is certain that it could only be the Syrian government, as no other party in the conflict zone could possibly possess chemical weapons. Here’s the problem with her statement. Firstly, the United States and the OPCW verified that Syria destroyed or surrendered all of its chemical weapons agents. On its official website, the OPCW states:
Veolia, the US firm contracted by the OPCW to dispose of part of the Syrian chemical weapons stockpile, has completed disposal of 75 cylinders of hydrogen fluoride at its facility in Texas.
This completes destruction of all chemical weapons declared by the Syrian Arab Republic. The need to devise a technical solution for treating a number of cylinders in a deteriorated and hazardous condition had delayed the disposal process.
Commenting on this development, the Director-General of the OPCW, Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü, said: “This process closes an important chapter in the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapon programme as we continue efforts to clarify Syria’s declaration and address ongoing use of toxic chemicals as weapons in that country.”
Secondly, the OPCW and the UN have both verified that opposition forces within Syria have used chemical agents as weapons on numerous occasions during the conflict. Not only has Carla Del Ponte, UN human rights investigator, former UN Chief Prosecutor and ICC attorney stated that opposition forces had used chemical weapons, but also the former OPCW head field investigator in Syria Jerry Smith stated to the BBC that he found it very unlikely that the government perpetrated these chemical attacks.. As recently as October of last year the U.S. State Department itself seemed to acknowledge the same truth in its warning to U.S. citizens traveling to Syria. The travel warning stated:
Tactics of ISIS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and other violent extremist groups include the use of suicide bombers, kidnapping, small and heavy arms, improvised explosive devices, and chemical weapons.
They have targeted major city centers, road checkpoints, border crossings, government buildings, shopping areas, and open spaces, in Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr provinces.”
U.S. History of using Chemical Weapons and Supporting Those that Do
The last country in the world that should lecture anyone on the possession and use of WMDs is the United States. Not only is the United States the only country in history to ever target civilians with multiple atomic bombs, it has used chemical weapons against the populations of Southeast Asia and Iraq in the past. Now, they were smart enough not to use mustard gas and anthrax, but the accumulative effects of Agent Orange and depleted uranium in these populations has been devastating, and will not only cause great harm and pain for these populations, but will leave the land poisoned for generations.
The United States sprayed copious quantities of TCDD (dioxin tetrachlordibenzo-para-dioxin), a class 1 carcinogen all over regions of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in an attempt to defoliate the jungle environment, and thus rob their enemy of an environment they excelled at fighting in and hiding in as part of Operation Ranch Hand. Known as Agent Orange, the chemical was banned in the U.S. in 1970. Although extremely hard to quantify, the devastating effects of dioxin exposure in the Vietnamese population are easily identifiable, as the same effects were observed in U.S. veterans that returned home after exposure to the toxin. Abnormally high levels of various cancers and debilitating birth defects are present in Southeast Asian populations in areas of greatest use of Agent Orange. Dioxins remain in the soil and water table, as they do not degrade naturally. Dioxin also bio-accumulates in the fatty tissues of animals and thus remains in the food supply.
One of the many young Vietnamese born long after the war with debilitating, neurodevelopmental diseases and birth defects due to Agent Orange exposure of their parents.
The United States learned little from the crime it perpetrated in Southeast Asia, nor did it seem to care as it repeated a similar offense in two successive invasions of Iraq. Having failed to achieve its aim of defeating Iran through its brutal Iraqi proxy, even after helping the Saddam Hussein regime in chemical warfare attacks against Iranian soldiers and Iraqi Kurdish civilians, the United States largely ignored the numerous atrocities carried out by one of its favorite dictators. The U.S. would turn on its erstwhile henchman in 1990, after Saddam decided to attack one of its favorite corrupt emirates in the region. The resulting 1991 invasion of Iraq saw the heavy use of depleted uranium armored piercing rounds. Depleted uranium is extremely dense, and thus good for piercing hardened steel or composite armor. The follow-on invasion of 2003 brought more death and destruction, and more depleted uranium.
Locations of depleted uranium munitions used by U.S. Airforce A-10 ground attack aircraft in Iraq during the 2003 invasion. Depleted Uranium is also used in anti-armor munitions utilized by all U.S. tanks and armored fighting vehicles as well, so the true breadth of distribution and employment of depleted uranium in the above map are understated.
The U.S. has not funded the reclamation and disposal of depleted uranium contaminated scrap in Iraq. The new Iraqi government has started cleaning up the approximately 350 sites identified as having depleted uranium contamination in the country, mostly around Basra and Baghdad, yet also scattered over the entire country. It is estimated that between 1,000 and 2,000 metric tons of depleted uranium used in various munitions fired during the invasion of 2003 alone. It is hard to narrow down the exact amount as the U.S. military has failed to provide any definitive numbers. Iraqi doctors have recorded and reported higher cases of cancers in adult patients and increased birth defects in children being born in Iraq since the invasion took place. The U.S. government seems determined to undermine any attempts to draw direct correlations between this recorded phenomenon and its use of depleted uranium in two successive wars in Iraq. It has also fought all attempts by U.S. war veterans suffering from various cancers and neurological diseases from their similar exposure in both wars.
Continued Support of War Criminals
Nikki Haley fails to acknowledge the historic role of the United States government’s support of some of the world’s most horrible regimes in the past. From the Khmer Rouge and Saddam Hussein then, to Saudi Arabia and Tahrir al-Sham now, the United States has supported many of the world’s most deplorable violators of human rights. Yet Nikki Haley has the arrogance and delusional belief that she has the moral high ground in chastising Syria and Russia before the U.N.?
Just this week U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo clarified that the Saudi and UAE have acted in good faith in taking steps to reduce civilian casualties in their military operations in Yemen and that the U.S. military would keep providing both material and direct support to both nations in prosecuting their illegal war. U.S. manufactured and supplied bombs are being used to kill civilians in Yemen regularly, amounting to an estimated 15,000 killed or injured civilians over a period of three years. This does not take into account the deaths and suffering associated with the humanitarian crisis that has resulted from the Saudi-led coalition destroying virtually all infrastructure in the Houthi controlled part of the country. I am sure that it is also just another “unintended consequence” that al-Qaeda has expanded and strengthened its position in Yemen as a direct result of the conflict. When will any member state in the U.N. finally tell Nikki Haley that the Security Council must acknowledge that al-Qaeda has always been a proxy of Saudi Arabia and the United States?
Children injured when a Saudi airstrike targeted a school bus in Saada, Yemen. A total of 51 civilians, 40 of them children below the age of 15 were killed in the strike. The United States supplies the aircraft, bombs, aerial refueling and intelligence gathering resources to support the bombing campaign.
Nikki Haley continues to claim that Russia is directly facilitating an impending humanitarian disaster and war crime in the impending Syrian military operations to retake Idlib province, destroy a host of ISIS and al-Qaeda linked terrorist groups and liberate hundreds of thousands of civilians. She said the same thing during the battle to liberate Aleppo. Her lies were revealed when the SAA and Russia finally liberated the city and Syrian civilians who were kept as prisoners there by the Islamic terrorists were finally free of the horror of their captivity. Is it no wonder that tens of thousands of Syrian refugees displaced by the conflict are now returning to their home country?
Apparently Nikki Haley sees no issue at all in Imperial America supporting Saudi Arabia and the UAE killing Yemeni civilians by the thousands in Yemen. The U.S. not only supplies the bombs, but directly provides in-flight refueling of the aircraft and the intelligence used to conduct the “precision” strikes that target schools, hospitals, funerals, and even school bus loads of children. Does this surprise anyone? U.S. coalition airstrikes against ISIL in Raqqa and Mosul killed an estimated 6,000 civilians. In Raqqa, U.S. aircraft conducted 90% of the airstrikes, and the U.S. fired at least 30,000 artillery rounds into the city. The U.S. has yet to pay any political or legal price for its indiscriminant destruction of these cities.
One of thousands of airstrikes carried out on the Syrian city of Raqqa. The U.S. led coalition was widely criticized for its blatant disregard for civilian casualties in its targeting of the city as part of its offensive to destroy ISIL. They have yet to be held accountable for the estimated 800-1,000 civilians deaths caused.
The Russian Response
Russia needs to finally accept the reality that there is nothing to be gained by negotiating, or attempting to collaborate with the United States in solving problems. It’s like a shepherd using a wolf to defend his flock, or a detective enlisting the aid of a criminal to solve a crime that the criminal is a co-conspirator in perpetrating. It is illogical in the extreme. The Russian U.N. mission needs to call out Nikki Haley and the U.S. on its own deplorable record and hypocrisy and while seeking the aid of other member states, must also realizing that most of them are bought-off by Washington. Hasn’t Haley repeatedly threatened to stop giving money to nations that do not support her resolutions?
The Russians need to realize that they can never have a mutually respectful and beneficial relationship with the political and financial elites that control the United States. Russia will always find a friend in the American people, but Washington? This same elite despises the American people more than it does Putin or Assad. If it wasn’t for working class American citizens fed up with the U.S. establishment elite, we would likely already be in a direct war with Russia, China and Iran. I hope that the Russian political and military leadership understands this. Stop trying to placate Washington and start preparing to defend your nation. The Deep State will not stop at Ukraine or Syria. They desire the complete subjugation of Russia and a return to the Yeltsin days, or worse.
The Saker has answered my question: http://thesaker.is/reply-to-paul-craig-roberts-crucial-question/ Except for his belief in the predominance of US military force over Russia in Syria and his possible misreading of my phrase, “turning the other cheek,” to imply Russian meekness rather than a calculated strategy that might be mistaken, I agree with him.
The difference, if there is one, is that by “provocations” I am addressing a broader arena than the possibilities for military confrontation in Syria/Iran and Ukraine. My concerns include, for example, the orchestrated “Skripal poisoning” by a “deadly nerve agent.” This story, despite the total absense of any evidence—indeed, the presence of much evidence against it—continues to develop with ever more absurd accusations. The purpose of this story is to put Russia and its president in the worst possible light, thereby creating a climate of belief for the next false flag attack to be blamed on Russia.
The question is: How much can Washington and its two-bit punk European vassals demonize Russia before it is impossible for the West to deal with Russia in a realistic and responsible manner? What was the Democratic Party and presstitute media thinking, assuming that they are capable of thought, most likely a risky assumption, when they lied, cheated, and stole in order to put Hillary Clinton in the White House? For the United States to have a president who forecloses in advance all negotiation and all trust between the US and Russian governments by declaring the president of Russia to be “the new Hitler” guarantees not only an escalation of dangerous tensions but also guarantees the inability to reduce them. It is this type of escalation more than a possible confrontation between US and Russian forces in Syria that can lead to explosive results.
The most scary fact of our time is that the two men most committed to peaceful relations between the US and Russia—Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin—are the two most demonized people on Earth. The demonization of Trump and Putin is the principal activity of the US media and the Democratic Party. . The demonization goes on all day every day. For example, the fake, nonsensical NY Times op-ed written by the NY Times itself and not by an anonymous “senior Trump official” was the principal focus yesterday of NPR. There was nothing balanced about NPR’s coverage. The NPR presstitutes rounded up every anti-Trump demonizer it could find to add to the conclusion that Trump was unfit for office and needed to be removed.
The previous day Putin was NPR’s target. NPR had the vice chairman of “Open Russia,” a Russiaphobic organization, spewing like a broken fire hydrant the most vile lies and accusations about “Putin’s Russia.” There was no contrary opinion. The NPR host treated it all as the exact truth. In other words, it was a propaganda show, not a news report. What is the purpose of these orchestrated demonizations? Is the purpose to further peace? Understanding? Defuse tensions? Better relations between nuclear powers? Obviously, none of the above.
How can the US media be so utterly stupid and irresponsible as to create a situation in which if a crisis erupts the leaders of the two major nuclear powers cannot speak to one another with an iota of trust? What is more dangerous for the world than the climate of hate Putin/hate Trump that the presstitutes, Democrats, US military/security complex, neocons, and crazed Republicans like John McCain have created?
The fact is this: In the United States and UK, political and media voices are doing everything to make impossible a responsible relationship between the two great powers. What could be more certain to result in war?
Many thanks to Ron Unz for hosting this exchange between Martyanov, The Saker, and myself.
Two men suspected by London of poisoning ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury were interviewed by RT, and said they had visited Salisbury as tourists. Sputnik discussed the issue with Dr. George Szamuely, political analyst and author of “Bombs for Peace: NATO’s Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia”.
Sputnik: What is your take on London’s allegations that the Skripal attack was approved at a senior level of the Russian state? What would Russia gain from this?
Dr. George Szamuely: Well it’s very hard to tell what’s been going on behind the scenes, there’s obviously some attempt on the British authorities’ part to keep the Skripal hysteria going.
I think it is connected with the events taking place in Syria and the expectation that the United States, Britain and France are set to launch missile attacks on Syria, and I think that this is part of softening up the public in anticipation of these attacks.So at the very time that Russia is in the headlines associated with chemical weapons, lo and behold, chemical weapons are supposedly being used by the Syrian government, which itself is being backed by Russia. So I think this latest disclosure, if we can call it that, is really tied up with what’s going on in Syria.
Sputnik: What do you make of the fact that the Russians have not been allowed to be involved in the investigation, the Russian side was not given the information that they had on the perpetrators, they were not given their passport numbers, is that normal or do you see anything strange in that?
Dr. George Szamuely: No, I don’t think it’s at all normal, I think Russia had every reason to be rather upset about this. First of all, it isn’t normal for them not to have access to the two victims of the poisoning, certainly Yulia Skripal is a Russian citizen and, therefore, they have every need to talk to her, there’s been an attempted murder on her, and they’ve been denied that, and they’ve been denied all of the investigatory material on which the Russians can actually be able to provide their own assesment, their own analysis, to have their own input.
The British attitude towards Russia seems to be: just admit your guilt! You have to admit your guilt! — any other response is unacceptable, but in the meantime we’re not going to even show you any evidence upon which you can make any inferences, any evidence upon which you can conduct your own investigation.
Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.
RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan has spoken exclusively to the two men the UK named as suspects in the Skripal poisoning – Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.
Margarita Simonyan: You called my cell phone, saying that you were Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov. You’re Alexander Petrov, and you’re Ruslan Boshirov. You do look like the people we saw in those pictures and videos from the UK. So who are you in reality?
Alexander Petrov: We are the people you saw.
Ruslan Boshirov: I’m Ruslan Boshirov.
AP: And I’m Alexander Petrov.
MS: These are your real names?
RB: Yes, these are our real names.
MS: But even now, frankly, you look very tense.
AP: What would you look like if you were in our shoes?
RB: When your whole life is turned upside down all of a sudden, overnight, and torn down.
MS: The guys we all saw in those videos from London and Salisbury, wearing those jackets and sneakers, these are you?
AP: Yes, it’s us.
MS: What were you doing there?
AP: Our friends have been suggesting for quite a long time that we visit this wonderful city.
MS: Salisbury? A wonderful city?
AP: Yes.
MS: What makes it so wonderful?
RB: It’s a tourist city. They have a famous cathedral there, Salisbury Cathedral. It’s famous throughout Europe and, in fact, throughout the world, I think. It’s famous for its 123-meter spire. It’s famous for its clock. It’s the oldest working clock in the world.
MS: So, you traveled to Salisbury to see the clock?
AP: No, initially we planned to go to London and have some fun there. This time, it wasn’t a business trip. Our plan was to spend some time in London and then to visit Salisbury. Of course, we wanted to do it all in one day. But when we got there, even our plane could not land on the first approach. That’s because of all the havoc they had with transport in the UK on March 2 and 3. Because of heavy snowfall, nearly all the cities were paralyzed. We were unable to go anywhere.
RB: It was in all the news. Railroads did not work on March 2 and 3. Highways were closed. Police cars and ambulances blocked off highways. There was no traffic at all – no trains, nothing. Why is it that nobody talks about any of this?
MS: Can you give the timeline? Minute by minute, or at least hour by hour, or as much as you can remember. You arrived in the UK – like you said, to have some fun and to see the cathedral, to see a clock in Salisbury. Can you tell us what you did in the UK? You spent two days there, right?
AP: Actually, three.
MS: OK, three. What did you do those three days?
AP: We arrived on March 2. We went to the train station to check the schedule, to see where we could go.
RB: The initial plan was to go there and return that day. Just take a look and return the same day.
AP: To Salisbury, that is. One day in Salisbury is enough. There’s not much you can do there.
RB: It’s a regular city. A regular tourist city.
MS: OK, I get that. That was your plan. But what did you actually do? You arrived. There was heavy snowfall. No trains, nothing. So, what did you do?
AP: No, we arrived in Salisbury on March 3. We wanted to walk around the city but since the whole city was covered with snow, we spent only 30 minutes there. We were all wet.
RB: There are no pictures. The media, television – nobody talks about the fact that the transport system was paralyzed that day. It was impossible to get anywhere because of the snow. We were drenched up to our knees.
MS: Alright. You went for a walk for 30 minutes, you got wet. What next?
AP: We traveled there to see Stonehenge, Old Sarum, and the Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But it didn’t work out because of the slush. The whole city was covered with slush. We got wet, so we went back to the train station and took the first train to go back. We spent about 40 minutes in a coffee shop at the train station.
RB: Drinking coffee. Drinking hot coffee because we were drenched.
AP: Maybe a little over an hour. That’s because of the large intervals between trains. I think this was because of the snowfall. We went back to London and continued with our journey.
RB: We walked around London…
MS: So, you only spent an hour in Salisbury?
AP: On March 3? Yes. That’s because it was impossible to get anywhere.
MS: What about the next day?
AP: On March 4, we went back there, because the snow melted in London, it was warm.
RB: It was sunny.
AP: And we thought, we really wanted to see Old Sarum and the cathedral. So we decided to give it another try on March 4.
MS: Another try to do what?
AP: To go sightseeing.
RB: To see this famous cathedral. To visit Old Sarum.
MS: So, did you see it?
RB: Yes, we did.
AP: On March 4, we did. But again, by lunchtime, there was heavy rain with snow.
RB: For some reason, nobody talks about this fact.
AP: So we left early.
MS: Is it beautiful?
RB: The cathedral is very beautiful. They have lots of tourists, lots of Russian tourists, lots of Russian-speaking tourists.
AP: By the way, they should have a lot of pictures from the cathedral.
MS: Your pictures, you mean?
AP: They should show them.
MS: I assume you took some pictures while at the cathedral?
RB: Of course.
AP: Sure, we did.
RB: We went to a park, we had some coffee. We went to a coffee shop and drank coffee. We walked around, enjoying those beautiful English Gothic buildings.
AP: For some reason, they don’t show this. They only show how we went to the train station.
MS: If you give us your pictures, we can show them. So, while you were in Salisbury, did you go anywhere near the house of the Skripals?
AP: Maybe. We don’t know.
RB: What about you? Do you know where their house is?
MS: I don’t. Do you?
RB: We don’t either.
AP: I wish somebody would tell us where it is.
RB: Maybe we passed it, or maybe we didn’t. I’d never heard about them before this nightmare started. I’d never heard this name before. I didn’t know anything about them.
MS: When you arrived in the UK, when you were in London or in Salisbury, throughout your whole trip, did you have any Novichok or some other poisonous agent or dangerous substance?
RB: No.
AP: It’s absurd.
MS: Did you have the bottle of Nina Ricci perfume which the UK presents as evidence of your alleged crime?
RB: Don’t you think that it’s kind of stupid for two straight men to carry perfume for ladies? When you go through customs, they check all your belongings. So, if we had anything suspicious, they would definitely have questions. Why would a man have perfume for women in his luggage?
AP: Even an ordinary person would have questions. Why would a man need perfume for women?
MS: Where would an ordinary person see that you have a perfume bottle?
RB: I mean, when you go through customs…
MS: Long story short, did you have that Nina Ricci bottle or not?
RB: No.
AP: No, of course not.
MS: Speaking of straight men, all footage features you two together. You spent time together, you lived together, you went for a walk together. What do you have in common that you spend so much time together?
RB: You know, let’s not breach anyone’s privacy. We came to you for protection, but this is turning into some kind of interrogation. We are going too far. We came to you for protection. You’re not interrogating us.
MS: We are journalists, we don’t protect. We aren’t lawyers. In fact, this was my next question. Why did you decide to go to the media? Your photos were published some time ago together with your names, but you were keeping silent. Today, you called me because you wanted to talk to the media. Why?
RB: To ask for protection.
AP: You say we kept silent. After our lives turned into a nightmare, we didn’t know what to do, where to go. Police? Investigative Committee? UK Embassy?
RB: Or FSB. We didn’t know.
MS: Why would you go to the UK Embassy?
AP: We really didn’t know what to do. Where to go? Hello?
RB: You know, when your life is turned upside down, you don’t really understand what to do and where to go. And many say, why don’t you go to the UK Embassy and explain everything?
MS: And you know what they are saying about you, right?
AP: Of course we do.
RB: Yes, of course. We can’t go out on the street because we are scared. We’re afraid.
MS: What are you afraid of?
RB: We fear for our lives. And for the lives of our families and friends.
MS: So, you fear that the UK secret service will kill you or what?
RB: We just don’t know.
AP: Simply read what they write there. They even offer a reward.
MS: What do you mean? There’s a bounty on your head?
RB: Dmitry Gudkov, if I am not mistaken, promised a trip to the UK to anybody who brings us to him. Do you think it’s OK? And you think we can feel just fine, walking around all smiling, talking to people? Any sensible person would be afraid.
MS: Why did you call me of all people? Why did you contact RT?
RB: We were reading the news today, your Telegram channel.
MS: Now I know people read it.
AP: You said it yourself. I don’t know whether I can mention this on air.
MS: Just say it. If it’s something we can’t say, we’ll take it out.
AP: “Let’s go, bastards,” you wrote.
MS: Oh, that. I wrote, “Go to the back of the line, you bastards” [meaning other media]. [This is a quote from Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel Heart of a Dog.]
Petrov and Boshirov have been accused of trying to kill a former spy [Reuters]
Two Russian men accused by the United Kingdom of attempting to murder a former Russian double agent and his daughter have claimed they were in the country as tourists.
The men, who identified themselves as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, told Russian state television RT that they visited Salisbury in early March because they wanted to see the southern English town’s famous cathedral.
Britain’s government has accused Petrov and Boshirov of trying to kill the Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia. The officials also allege that the pair are military intelligence agents who were sent to the UK to poison the Skripals with the nerve agent Novichok.
The men denied the allegations and said they visited Salisbury on March 3 for tourism but stayed for 30 minutes only.
“We went there to see Stonehenge, Old Sarum. But we couldn’t do it because there was muddy slush everywhere. We got wet, took the train and came back [to London],” the pair told RT before adding that they returned to Salisbury the following day “to see the Old Sarum and the cathedral”.
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin described the two men as “civilians”.
“We, of course, checked who these people are,” said Putin. “There is nothing special there, nothing criminal, I assure you. We’ll see in the near future.”
A spokesperson for the UK government said the two men who appeared on RT were the same men suspected of poisoning the Skripals.
“The government is clear these men are officers of the Russian military intelligence service – the GRU – who used a devastatingly toxic, illegal chemical weapon on the streets of our country.”
“We have repeatedly asked Russia to account for what happened in Salisbury in March. Today – just as we have seen throughout – they have responded with obfuscation and lies.”
A British government minister, who represents Salisbury, said on Twitter that the statements were not credible.
“Delighted that Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Borishov were able to see the world-class attractions that #Salisbury has to offer. But very strange to come all this way for just two days while carrying Novichok in their luggage,” Tweeted John Glen, the Member of Parliament for Salisbury.
“Salisbury welcomes tourists from around the world and is very much open for business. But the Petrov/Borishov statements are not credible and don’t match the widely accepted intelligence we have on these individuals.”
On March 4, Skripal and his daughter were found slumped unconscious on a bench in the town of Salisbury after being exposed to the nerve agent Novichok. They spent weeks in hospital before being discharged.
The failed attack triggered a major diplomatic crisis between the UK and Russia, with the British government alleging Moscow was responsible for the attempted murder. Russia has repeatedly denied those claims.
UK prosecutors have said they have “sufficient evidence” to charge the pair but did not formally demand their extradition, as Russia does not extradite its citizens.
Skripal and Syria… The Imperative of Criminalizing Russia
There is a direct link between Britain’s sensational allegations against Russia in the Skripal affair and NATO’s losing covert war in Syria.
That’s not just the opinion of critical observers. Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations made the explicit link when she called an “emergency meeting” of the Security Council earlier this week.
The Security Council meeting was convened only hours after British counter-terrorism police released video images claiming to identify two Russian men, whom it said were responsible for the alleged poison assassination attempt on former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in England earlier this year.
The council meeting also followed swiftly on the heels of British Prime Minister Theresa May telling her parliament that the culprits were Russian military intelligence officers acting on orders from the Kremlin. May did not give supporting evidence. It was bald assertion.
In this short clip, Britain’s envoy to the UN Karen Pierce tells reporters the rationale of the British government in convening the emergency session at the Security Council. The envoy reveals more than she intended.
She says that the United Kingdom and its allies would “continue to contest the Russian view of the world in which their state operatives can carry out these sorts of attacks [in England] and can encourage and support the Syrian authorities in their attacks on civilians.”
Pierce added: “So this is actually a continuum, if you like, of contesting that view of the world where you can act outside the norms of international rules and civilized behavior.”
Evidently, the British government is trying to criminalize both Russia and Syria at the same time, over the same alleged crime – unlawful use of chemical weapons.
That would account for why the British authorities have been unduly hasty in accusing the Russian state of culpability in the Skripal affair. By undermining and smearing Russia as a “pariah state”, it is then possible to stifle Russia’s crucial military support for Syria. This is especially urgent given the juncture in the Syria war where NATO-backed militants are staring at final defeat.
The US, Britain and France have all recently threatened to use military power against the Syrian government forces “if” the latter launch chemical weapons attacks. That of course is a cynical pretext for the NATO states to find a legal cover for aggression against Syria.
The allegations of “imminent” chemical weapon use by the Syrian government are also baseless since Damascus no longer possesses any such munitions, or indeed has any military need for such weapons.
What the Skripal affair is therefore trying to do is inculcate in the public mind that Russia has no scruples about using chemical weapons to kill people, which in turn reinforces the notion that Moscow’s Syrian ally also has no scruples about killing people with toxic materials.
The NATO claims of Syrian national forces using chemical weapons have been shown to be false. In recent days, Russian envoy to the UN Vasily Nebenzia demanded that the US present details of a Pentagon target list of chemical weapons sites in Syria. The US balked.
By contrast, there is a healthy skepticism among the Western public about official allegations against the Syrian government. Pink Floyd’s legendary singer-songwriter Roger Waters speaks for many when he recently called out the NATO-backed so-called rescue group, the White Helmets, as being implicated in orchestrating chemical attacks for propaganda purposes.
In order to overcome the propaganda problem of demonizing the Syrian government and giving itself a pretext for launching military strikes on Syria, the NATO powers therefore have to boost their flagging “false flag” narrative of chemical weapons responsibility.
By criminalizing Russia for allegedly using chemical weapons “on the streets of Britain”, it is a ploy to augment the dubious narrative criminalizing Syria.
Here is British envoy Pierce speaking again: “The reason the Security Council has not been able to act on CW [chemical weapon] use in Syria is because of Russia. There is a circularity here. Russia is the key to upholding the universal ban on CW use. And the world would be better if Russia would join us in making that ban absolutely watertight.”
Britain’s use of the word “circularity” is certainly apt – albeit for a completely different reason. The actual circular logic is to criminalize both Russia and Syria over chemical weapons. Russia, it is calculated, will then not have the authority to use its veto power at the Security Council in order to prevent the three NATO powers on the council from launching their much-desired military attack on Syria to salvage their losing covert war.
The reckless haste by which the British authorities are accusing Russia over the Skripal affair – a haste which makes a mockery of legal due process and diplomatic norms – can plausibly be explained by the urgency of the NATO powers to free up their military plans on Syria.
How can the release of video images allegedly of two Russian nationals in Britain be possibly attributed to the Kremlin? Two Russian men – if indeed that is genuine information – are supposed to be “compelling evidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an assassination. It is a preposterous leap of imagination and a travesty of legal process, but it is revealing of an execrable British prejudice of Russophobia.
One possible theory in the Skripal affair is that the two alleged Russian men were members of organized crime. Reports emerged this week that former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal was working with Spanish state security services to crackdown on Russian underworld gangs. It is possible that the gangs uncovered Skripal’s meddling in their illicit business model, and simply sent a couple of heavies over to Britain to deal with him. But how such a hypothetical account can be twisted by the British authorities to be “proof” of Kremlin involvement is a telling question.
It is significant that the British authorities have flatly refused requests from the Russian side for information to identify the alleged Skripal hitmen. For example, British regulations require fingerprints to be submitted by all visitors to the country. Why have the British refused to give fingerprints to Russian authorities which could then lead to an identification and perhaps explanation of the two alleged suspects?
The British don’t want to know the truth, because their official narrative of criminalizing the Russian state is the imperative one. And that is because of the urgency for NATO to find a legal, political cover for its military aggression against Syria.
As we detailed earlier, in what appears to be the latest escalation in the UK government’s campaign to blame Russia for the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal, his daughter Yulia Skripal and three other seemingly random Britons (one of whom succumbed to the deadly Novichok nerve agent used in the attacks), British prosecutors are saying they have “sufficient evidence” to charge Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, both Russian nationals, with conspiracy to murder Skripal, as well as the attempted murder of his daughter and police detective Nick Bailey, according to Reuters.
The news comes nearly two months after investigators said they had identified the suspected perpetrators of the Novichok attackby crossing referencing CCTV feeds with records of people who entered the country around that time.
Russia has apparently developed an astonishing new technology enabling its secret agents to occupy precisely the same space at precisely the same time.
These CCTV images released by Scotland yard today allegedly show Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Borishov both occupying exactly the same space at Gatwick airport at precisely the same second. 16.22.43 on 2 March 2018. Note neither photo shows the other following less than a second behind.
There is no physically possible explanation for this. You can see ten yards behind each of them, and neither has anybody behind for at least ten yards. Yet they were both photographed in the same spot at the same second.
The only possible explanations are:
1) One of the two is traveling faster than Usain Bolt can sprint
2) Scotland Yard has issued doctored CCTV images/timeline.
Will any mainstream media organizations question this publicly?
It seems notably fortuitous that the world is now distracted with the ongoing actions surrounding President Trump – whether in Quebec tweet-slamming PM Trudeau, or in Singapore ahead of his historic summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
We say ‘fortuitous’ since it offers UK PM Theresa May some breathing room as her dramatic, quickly determined, and globally propagandized claims that Russia was the culprit for the poisoning of the Russian ex-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter; remain entirely unsubstantiated by any proof.
However, just as May was hoping the world had forgot dozens of nations expelled hundreds of Russian diplomats on nothing more than her word and the constant Russophobic narrative pumped thru the eyeballs and earholes of the rest of the world; the Germans just threw a rather loud wrench in the slient-running PR campaign that has taken the Skripal-murdering Putin off the frontpage.
German media reports that the German government has zero evidence from the British authorities that could back London’s claims that Moscow was behind the poisoning of the Skripals
More than three months since the start of the probe into the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, RT reports that the UK is still conspicuously tight-lipped when it comes to any real evidence that could prove its accusations against Russia.
This week, the German government informed a parliamentary oversight committee during a closed hearing that it still has not received any evidence suggesting that Russia might well be behind the incident that took place in early March, German TV station RBB reports.
“It is [still] only known that the poison used in the attack was a nerve agent called Novichok, which was once produced in the Soviet Union,” Michael Goetschenberg, a correspondent of German ARD and an expert on security services, told RBB, commenting on the results of the hearing, which he is familiar with.
Apart from this information, which was released by the British authorities soon after the incident, no new data on Russia’s alleged implication in this case was provided to Germany so far, he added.
German intelligence has also found no Russian trace in this case so far, Goetschenberg said.
“The BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence… has also contacted its own sources and tried to verify the information [about Russia’s potential involvement] in some way,” he told RBB, adding that it eventually failed to find any evidence pointing to Moscow as well.
Russia has categorically denied any involvement, and has complained that the victims were not allowed visits by Russian lawyers and diplomats, and the results of the investigation were kept secret. The Russian envoy to the UK has on several occasions alleged that London was even trying to “destroy” evidence in the probe.
Just days ago, Scotland Yard said it was still following multiple leads in the investigation, adding that it still “cannot discuss the results at this stage.” The probe has already cost £7.5 million ($10 million) to British taxpayers, according to the region’s police and crime commissioner.
Meanwhile, both Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been released from the hospital, seemingly no worse for the attampted assassination using the world’s most deadly nerve agent.
Are we still supposed to believe that Vladimir Putin – the man who western media and politicians blame for meddling with US elections to get Trump elected, manipulating French elections (unsuccessfully), murdering reporters (that actually came back to life), causing Brexit, killing millions in Syria (and anywhere else that US hegemony is bring back democracy), enabling an entire nation’s athletes to take steroids, and probably causing LeBron and the Cavs to get swept – managed to mess up the delivery of a deadly military grade nerve agent to kill an old man and a young woman?
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:
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
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.
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.
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.
The UK continues to conceal and destroy evidence relating to the Salisbury incident and have crossed all boundaries in their rhetoric by alleging President Putin’s personal involvement, Russia’s UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia has said.
“The British authorities are engaged in the systematic destruction of evidence,” Nebenzia told the United Nations Security Council, which held a session, called by UK on Wednesday, to discuss the OPCW report and other developments in the Skripal case.
“Skripal’s pets were killed. No samples were obviously taken. The places attended by the Skripals – a bar, a restaurant, a bench, park ground, etc – are all being cleared,” the diplomat said, pointing out that, despite some loud statements about the alleged contamination of the area, “people continue to live in Salisbury as if nothing happened.”
The envoy also reminded the council members that Sergei and Yulia Skripal, who, according to London, are now both recovering from the poisoning by a deadly military grade nerve agent A-234 (‘Novichok’), are kept hidden from the public eye ever since the March 4 incident. In the meantime, London categorically refuses to provide Russia any access to the investigation, and so far has left 45 out of 47 questions addressed to British authorities about the case unanswered.
In a summary of its report, the OPCW didn’t not independently identify the nerve agent used in the Salisbury case nor its origin, but instead only confirmed “the findings of the United Kingdom relating to the identity of the toxic chemical that was used in Salisbury.”
The conclusions made by OPCW were based on samples provided by the UK investigators and do not prove London’s claim of Russia’s involvement in the poisoning, Nebenzia noted. “The main thing that the report lacks, and what the British side was so eager to see, is the conclusion that the substance used in Salisbury was produced in Russia,” he said.
The UK Ambassador to the United Nations, Karen Pierce, however, downplayed the lack of technical evidence and urged the council members to look at “the wider picture which has led the United Kingdom to assess that there’s no plausible alternative explanation than Russian State responsibility for what happened in Salisbury.”
Extensively using the ‘highly likely’ argument, the UK envoy once again claimed in her address to the UNSC that only Russia had the “technical means, operational experience and the motive to target the Skripals.” At one point she even claimed that “President Putin himself was closely involved in the Russian chemical weapons programme.”
“London apparently thinks the Russian President has a hobby of running chemical weapons programs in his free time. I don’t know whether you appreciate that you’ve crossed all possible boundaries,” Nebenzia replied.
While the UK is yet to produce clear evidence of Russian involvement in the alleged poisoning of the former double agent and his daughter, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley once again attacked Moscow during the council meeting, parroting its ally’s narrative.
“As we have stated previously, the United States agrees with the UK’s assessment that Russia is responsible for the chemical weapons in Salisbury,” Haley said. “Whether that is in their direct act, or irresponsibly losing control of the agent, which could be worse, our support for our British friends and colleagues is unwavering.”
“According to witnesses and survivors of the assault, Marines indiscriminately killed men, women, children, the elderly and disabled alike. Civilians waving white flags of surrender were cut down by snipers, who also targeted ambulances carrying the wounded and dying to the few functioning clinics not destroyed by US bombs. “I see people carrying a white flag and yelling at us, saying, ‘We are here, just try to save us,’ but we could not save them because whenever we opened the ambulance door, the Americans would shoot at us,” Dr. Salam Ismael, head of Iraq’s young doctors association, told American investigative reporter Aaron Glantz, who covered the battle as an unembedded journalist. “We tried to carry food or water; the snipers shoot the containers of food.”
“Wealth maketh many friends; but the poor is separated from his neighbour.”
— Proverbs 19:4
“The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization”.
— Sigmund Freud
James “Mad Dog” Mattis spoke this week, at a pentagon press briefing, saying, among other things, that it was a time for all civilized nations to unite. The use of this trope ‘civilized’ echoes colonial sensibility. It is part of general shifting of meaning in the rhetoric of Empire over the last, say, 80 years.
Never mind that the occasion of this speech, as seems increasingly the norm, was based on mostly propaganda. No evidence for a chemical attack was actually provided. Just as the evidence in the Skripal (attempted) murder (sic) is conspicuously lacking.
This is a time when war criminals (unprosecuted of course) can simply count on the utter amnesia of both the public and the quisling western press.
So lets go back and check a few boxes on Mattis. This is the man who oversaw the war crimes of Fallujah and then helped cover them up. One can read about it here.
So how is it that Mattis can so confidently count on the silence and complicity of the corporate press? Mattis is no doubt sociopathic. He is a lizard eyed lisping sadist and yet he is fawned over and described as the ‘the most revered Marine in a generation’ by the same prostrate press. The adoration of the military in western media is at an all time high. And entertainment today is laden with the most jingoistic and nativist rhetoric imaginable. Hollywood today produces fiction that is uniform in its opinions and values. Watch this season of Designated Survivor. I know that is asking a lot, but do it anyway. Kiefer Sutherland is one of those actors who in middle age has begun to take on the tight lipped appearance of an aggrieved or constipated Quaker. The show is so stunningly reactionary that one finds some difficulty in arriving at the right words. But it is not an anomaly. Half of network prime time drama is military based in theme. And today Hollywood staff writers can count on CIA or Pentagon “advisors” taking an active part in the creation of scripts. The blurring of fiction and Imperial fiction, as it were. There are ongoing themes in this Sutherland show about Russian interference in US democracy and most recently a story built around a tiny Asian nation with an insane dictatorial leader who wants nuclear weapons. The depictions of the Asian characters is only slightly less cartoon like than Charlie Chan. And always there are the requisite evil Muslim terrorist.
But back to the disturbing figure of Jim Mattis. His call sign is “chaos”. He is reported to be worth in the neighborhood of five million dollars. This is an absurd low ball figure, but whatever. He is a graduate of Central Washington U. and something called the National Defense University. A quick internet search reveals this is a special educational institution on the grounds of Fort Leslie in DC and chartered by the Joint Chiefs. One does wonder what a typical class at NDU looks like?
As for the “pacification” of Fallajuh. Brett Wilkins wrote….
“According to witnesses and survivors of the assault, Marines indiscriminately killed men, women, children, the elderly and disabled alike. Civilians waving white flags of surrender were cut down by snipers, who also targeted ambulances carrying the wounded and dying to the few functioning clinics not destroyed by US bombs. “I see people carrying a white flag and yelling at us, saying, ‘We are here, just try to save us,’ but we could not save them because whenever we opened the ambulance door, the Americans would shoot at us,” Dr. Salam Ismael, head of Iraq’s young doctors association, told American investigative reporter Aaron Glantz, who covered the battle as an unembedded journalist. “We tried to carry food or water; the snipers shoot the containers of food.”
No civilizational norms violated there. Nope. Mattis also was the man who had all charged dropped against the soldiers that took part in the rampage at Haditha. Civilians shot point blank, often women and children, and the elderly — in their homes.
Callsign “Chaos”.
Gary Kohis, MD, writing at Veterans Today….
“Several of the PEOTUS’ cabinet appointees are high-ranking “lifer” military officers who have an innate disdain for democratic values (as would be expected for anybody whose career has been lived in the bubble of a hierarchical culture whose main junk values are 1) shoot first/ask questions later and 2) the use of dominative power over “enemies” via military violence.”
Kohis was primarily writing about Jim Mattis. But honestly, even a cursory examination of ANY four star General will yield similar biographical facts and similar personality disorders. You don’t rise through military ranks without a core ruthlessness, and an innate sadism.
After the bombing of a wedding party in the Iraq desert, Mattis is quoted as saying…
“Ten miles from the Syrian border and 80 miles from the nearest city and a wedding party? Don’t be naïve. Plus they had 30 males of military age with them. How many people go to the middle of the desert to have a wedding party?”
The rank Orientalism of this comment, the arrogant indifference to the history and culture of Islam, to the Arab world in general, is also the hallmark of the successful military commander. Kill em all and let God sort it out. Of course at the time of his nomination the NY Times published an op ed whose headline identified Mattis as a “potential force for restraint”. That crazy old paper of record. And Mattis is routinely described as an intellectual, a ‘warrior monk’, and yet he doesn’t know anything of nomadic desert societies and culture. He didn’t even consider there might be a cultural gap here, or consider he might need to alternative readings of the Muslim world, ones not provided for by that stellar education at National Defense U. Mattis is not an intellectual, not even by the standards of that warped sub phylum of humanity that is the military.
The media coverage of Syria, in the UK and US, is blatantly biased and pro intervention. The fact that FOX news reactionary Tucker Carlson is the sanest voice in mainstream media is very telling. Carlson hasn’t “woke”…. he just saw a niche demographic that might boost his ratings. Still…he was in fact correct.
Danny Haiphong wrote…
“Tucker Carlson understands that he must appeal primarily to Republican voters weary of US interventions they see as products of Democratic Party-led wars even if establishment Republicans are no less hawkish than Democrats. Meanwhile, Goodman and her founders have subtly aligned with the Democrats as the new leaders of the War Party. War is the only tool at the disposal of imperialism, and there isn’t a single voice in Washington or the “liberal” media unwilling to use it.
Under these conditions, infantile leftists and faux socialists in the Democratic Party camp have felt compelled to choose a side in the imperial madhouse. They claim that Democrats are “Presidential” while Putin and Assad are villains of humanity. No criticism is thrown at the Democratic Party, which sent a delegation led by Nancy Pelosi to Israel just days prior to the planned gun down of Palestinian resistance forces in Gaza. It doesn’t seem to matter how many Syrians or Palestinians are killed by the forces of imperialism when the so-called left is under the swoon of the CIA. So-called US leftists have caught anti-Putin fever at the expense of all other political questions.
This includes the murder of Black people by the police in the US. Barely any attention was paid in the US to the murders of Stephon Clark and Saheed Vassell over the last few weeks. Only community members and the usual left organizations made any noise about these state-sanctioned murders. The same goes for Israel’s wanton massacre of participants in Gaza’s Great March for Return. In the absence of a mass movement, people in the US and West are becoming mere onlookers in a changing a world.”
This last few months has revealed as never before both the callous cruelty of the ruling class in the U.S. and UK, but also the degrading of education …for lack of a better description. At the UN, British envoy Karen Pierce, mistakenly thought Karl Marx was a Russian. In a prank phone call Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, thought there was a country called Binimo. And Trump himself noted something or other about an imaginary African country called Nambia. Boris Johnson began an extemporaneous recitation of a Kipling poem (Road to Mandalay) in a temple in Myanmar. And then was told it was inappropriate by an aid, trying to save him further embarrassment, and STILL Johnson didn’t understand. All of these examples are not mere gaffes, amusing mistakes, but rather a general indifference to the cultures of the world, in fact an indifference to the world beyond their own small corner it. Indifferent and hostile. Remember when George Bush, now in full rehabilitation mode by his media handlers, mocked Karla Faye Tucker, on death row, who was begging for her life. That is exactly the cruelty one sees across the board in the leaders of the West today. One wonders does Mattis or Bush or Bolton think the use of Agent Orange transgressed civilization norms? Did Hiroshima?
What strikes me most acutely, these last few months, is the extraordinary cultural chauvinism of the U.S., or rather mostly of white U.S., as well as an institutionalized Orientalism. Most White Americans, as a general statement, think they are better than the rest of the world. And most Americans have scant knowledge about the rest of the world. So the belief in cultural (and moral ) superiority is based on what? The answer is not simple, but as a general sort of response, this trust in “our” superiority is built on violence. On an ability to be effectively violent. Most British, too, think they are superior to those ‘wogs’ south of their emerald isle. But since the setting of the sun on Empire, ‘officially’, the British hold to both a sense of superiority and a deep panic inducing sense of inferiority — at least to their American cousins. They are still better than those fucking cheese eating frogs or the krauts or whoever, but they accept that the U.S. is the sort of heavyweight champ of the moment. Meanwhile, the tragic and criminal fire at Grenfell Towers in London elicited a public discourse that perfectly reflected the class inequality of the UK, but also reflected, again, the colonialist mentality of the ruling party and their constituency.
Stephen Brenner wrote of the fire and the government response to it:
“There is Sir Martin Moore-Bick,** the former High Court Judge, who has been appointed by May to head a board of inquiry. Fears of a protracted inquiry producing an anodyne report were aroused when Moore-Bick went out of his way to declare that the scope of the investigation would be severely limited to determining the immediate cause of the fire and why it spread so rapidly. Answers to both questions already are known. ( ) The Sir Inquisitor-to-be has given the game away in adding that “I do not expect everyone to be pleased by the conclusion of the inquiry” – yet to begin. Moore-Bick’s unprompted utterance shows just how pervasive is the Americanization of British political culture. Unnecessary, embarrassing ejaculations like this have become impulsive – defying the dictates of prudent restraint.No one is confused as to who the “everyone” he has in mind refers to. An impression reinforced by the denial of the residents’ right to ask questions in person as to the scope and form of the inquiry. The only open question is the exact tint that the whitewash will take (stitch-up in British dialect). The first testimony will not be heard until mid-September when panel members, as yet unnamed, get back from their holidays.”
Graham Peebles adds…
“Grenfell Tower forms part of the Lancaster Road West Estate in Notting Hill Gate. An area that, like many other parts of the capital, has been subjected to a gentrification assault accompanied by systematic social cleansing that goes back decades and has intensified over the last 10 –15 years. ( ) In addition, the Grenfell affair demonstrates that the United States is not alone in its tolerance for actions that should be a national disgrace but are slighted by a political class incapable of feeling shame. The callous, off-hand treatment given the Grenfell victims is reminiscent of how colonial administrators dealt with expendable natives. If a proper criminal process were undertaken, a reasonable verdict would be Involuntary Manslaughter.”
But that is exactly it. The colonial template is one etched in acid in the collective imagination of the West. At least the English speaking West. Expendable natives…which is what Jim Mattis sees everywhere that he dumps depleted Unranium and Willy Pete. It is what Madelaine Albright saw in Iraq or Hillary Clinton in Libya or Barack Obama in Sudan, Yemen, and…well… four or five other countries. It is what most U.S. police departments see in neighborhoods ravaged by poverty. As in those old Tarzan films, when the sound of drums is heard, the pith helmeted white man notes…”the natives are restless tonight”. When one discusses Syria, the most acute topic this week, remember that for Mad Dog and Boss Trump, or for the loopy John Bolton, these are just natives in need of pacification. Giving money to ISIS or Daesh, or whoever, as a cynical expression of colonial real politik, is nothing out of the ordinary. It is what the UK and US have done for a long while. It’s Ramar of Jungle handing out beads to the *natives*.
Domestically, take the example of Flint, Michigan. At the drinking water. When the unelected state appointed emergency manager switched from the Detroit River to the Flint River to supply water to the residents of Flint, the result was a spike in all diseases of sanitation. Everyone knew this was going to happen. The General Motors plant had stopped using Flint River water because it was corrosive to the auto parts they were manufacturing. But poor black kids, who cares. The U.S. has a long history of such stuff, from Love Canal, New York, to the chemical dump in the Elk River in West Virginia. You will notice a theme here. It is class. You don’t find ash spills like what happened near the Emery River in Tennessee occurring in Mill Valley or Scarsdale or Bel Air. Inflicting suffering on the poor is perfectly acceptable to the ruling class. To them, privilege is a sign of superiority. And the less deserving are only there to serve.
The problem with the current wave of propaganda from western sources is that very little, if any, evidence is given. The term ‘very likely’ is much in vogue, probably because it leaves such a huge ‘walk it back’ escape route. Except there is less and less effort to even bother. In one sense the solidification of class power came out of neoliberal policies in the 1970s. The top 1% (really, the top half of one percent) increased their wealth dramatically, with the same occurring in the UK. Clinton pushed these principles even further and then Bush and Blair further still. We are now living the dream of the Washington Consensus economists. And it worth noting the founding statement of Hayak’s Mt. Pelerin Society, in 1947. For Hayak was the godfather of neoliberalism and Milton Freidman his heir.
“The central values of civilization are in danger. Over large stretches of the earth’s surface the essential conditions of human dignity and freedom have already disappeared.”
There is that word again. Of course this was really only justification for the 1% to expand the reach of Western capital. To exploit labor and extract resources. And when recalcitrant countries did not submit quickly enough, the CIA was always available (ask Iran, or Chile, or Angola. The latter more of a symbolic lesson for those uppity nations even thinking about not following orders. It also marked open U.S. cooperation with apartheid South Africa. And in opposition to the troops Castro sent to assist the MPLA opposition to the ruthless US supported Jonas Savimbi). This restoration of ruling class power, though, was and is always looking over its shoulder. For the reality is that such profound inequality means life becomes unsustainable, even for the top 0.1% is repressed. And such repression takes effort. And that effort is giving birth to the madness one sees today. From Grenfell Tower to Flint Michigan, to Gaza or Libya or Syria — the principles driving the violence are the same. And it matters not if the urbane and articulate Obama is President, or if the troglodyte Trump, if it is Blair or May, for they are only reciting from a small financial Catechism of financial laws, and these laws are breaking down in the face of environmental degradation and an inequality so extreme that its almost impervious to calculation. They are only the voice of their class. This idea of civilized man has come to be an almost code-word for class hierarchy. The violence against Palestinians is simply inseparable from the violence that killed Stephon Clark. The violence that makes children sick in Michigan is the same one that causes oil spills or disasters such as the Lac-Mégantic train crash near Quebec, Canada. And, it is the same bigoted smug confidence of bourgeoise identity political thinking. The one that demands Islam rid itself of veils, or that ridicules ANY thinking or practice divergent from Western norms. You cannot expect the system to produce change if the system is based on punishing change. The status quo must be protected. For the ownership class world poverty is mostly the fault of the poor.
“The admission that neoliberalism has failed in terms of its announced goals has forced its proponents to a tactical retreat—defending the broad thrust of the neoliberal policy agenda under cover of “reform.” The result is an augmented Washington Consensus that blames client states and not international institutions or transnational capital for the failures of neoliberalism. It is the poor who are expected to make still further adjustments along neoliberal lines. From this point of view, what comes after neoliberalism must be more neoliberalism.”
William K. Tabb
This idea of civilizational norms is connected to a deeply rooted assumption about the virtue of Democracy. Israel is described as Democratic but Cuba is not, for example. The reality, of course, is that the CIA and US ruling class spend most of their energy in deterring democracy (to quote Chomsky).
“Any real discussion of democracy needs to be extended beyond the undemocratic nature of the global economic institutions to a larger discussion of democracy, one that goes beyond whether votes are counted fairly, opposition candidates allowed to participate on an equal basis, and the voices of ordinary people heard by their elected leaders. Democracy needs finally to be discussed in relation to class rule in capitalist societies.”
William T. Kabb
As Samir Amin pointed out, the “international community” (the G7 plus that bastion of democracy, Saudi Arabia) is utterly unconcerned with the opinions of 85% of the world’s population. So, both on a political/economic level, and on a cultural level, the Imperialist U.S. sees it as an innate right to decide the policies of the global south. It is anti democratic. The ruling class sees the right to enforce inequality as something of a Natural law. The anti Russian propaganda was born when Putin refused to sign off on the Nazi putsch in Ukraine. The US/Japan/NATO alliance is one that demands both economic submission and increasingly a cultural submission as well. And any rejection of this means a military forced submission. Democracy has come to be a shorthand for submission to neo-liberal economic policy dictated by Washington. Freedom is what happens after *we* destroy your country.
That Mattis or May or various other servants of Empire can talk of civilzational norms with a straight face is actually pretty remarkable. The list of crimes is so extensive that one barely knows where to begin. We could ask about Gary Webb and cocaine and the CIA. Or about the School of the Americas, or My Lai or the siege at Waco. Or…but I feel this stuff really should be well known by now. I am more concerned in a sense with the small cultural appropriations and the gestures of an Orientalist sensibility that I see almost daily in western media. And the growing anti-antisemitism which one find even on the left. And the seemingly intractable racism of white America. I just stop having the ability to keep track of it all. How can the white bourgeoisie demand adherence to their values with such tenacity? Do they really see themselves as somehow representative of some ideal? Tolerance means only adherence to their worldview. To their values. It is this nattering about ecological issues while never questioning the US military machine. But these refrains seem to stick in the collective consciousness of the west…”gas your own people” is one. As if gassing someone else were less objectionable. It is a media universe of entrenched meaningless slogans. It always reminds me of the outcry about steroid abuse. Maybe ask why big Pharma manufacture so many steroids. The medical uses for which are very limited. But no, it is easier to punish this or that athlete who in their desperation is looking for an edge, a way to reach that economic pinnacle so few reach. But question Eli Lilly? Never.
The ruling class have always made money, always been ruthless, but again, the 1970s marked the solidification of systematic plunder, a cohesive and seamless river of money upwards. And enforced by the CIA. One should not forget that the CIA was founded by rich white ruling class scions of banking and finance. Allan Dullus, straight out of Wall Street, William Simon, Richard Mellon Scaife, Frank Shakespeare, and Bill Donovan. I mean the CIA calls itself “the Company”…bit a tip off, that. If one struggles to grasp foreign policy decisions, always look at US business interests in the region. Remember these are ruthless people (MK ULTRA, Operation Mockingbird, etc). And the media was always part of this. The Graham family of Washington Post fame were directly linked to the CIA. William Paley, Henry Luce, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, and hundreds other are all intimate with the CIA. And it is no different now. It was the Clinton cartel that spent inordinate energy and time infiltrating Hollywood. The result is House of Cards, Homeland, Designated Survivor, and all the countless rest. Uniformity of message. Uniformity of values.
I do wonder at times the role of Evangelical Christianity as it runs smack into the Catholic stake outs in the corridors of power. Perhaps they cooperate, I don’t know. Religion is second to money, anyway. And then there is the role of Israel, that anti democratic neo colonial apartheid state in the Middle East. The ascension of the settler fanatic mirrors the ascension of Dominionists in the current US government. Fanatical zealots. Intolerant and profoundly ignorant of most things outside of their narrow set of concerns. And again, anti democratic. Israel serves the U.S. ruling class, not the other way round. There is no global Jewish plot as I keep reading in social media. The feeding of this bit of classic antisemitism is probably sourced by Israel itself. Nothing serves their PR better than spikes in antisemitism. But Israel is, for sure, more powerful than ever before. More influential.
There is, best case scenario, a new Cold War in place. Worst case scenario, well, doesn’t matter. The real danger is the generalized ignorance now on display. Ruthless and sadistic one can predict, but irrational zealotry and stupidity…that is harder to deal with. And this is for certain the Age of Stupid. As for civilization, I’m coming to think we might well do fine without it.
John Steppling is an original founding member of the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival, a two-time NEA recipient, Rockefeller Fellow in theatre, and PEN-West winner for playwriting. Plays produced in LA, NYC, SF, Louisville, and at universities across the US, as well in Warsaw, Lodz, Paris, London and Krakow. Taught screenwriting and curated the cinematheque for five years at the Polish National Film School in Lodz, Poland. A collection of plays, Sea of Cortez & Other Plays was published in 1999, and his book on aesthetics, Aesthetic Resistance and Dis-Interest was published this year by Mimesis International.
An increasing number of voices are being heard demanding that Britain apologize for the unprecedented witch hunt being conducted against Russia under the utterly false pretext of the “Skripal incident.” However, Russian President Vladimir Putin has bluntly stated:
“We do not hope for anything other than for common sense to eventually prevail and for international relations to avoid the setbacks we have seen recently.”
It is clear that on an official level Moscow is not going to dig in its heels and demand an apology from London as a prerequisite for the resumption of communication, although that sort of dialog would be possible with the leaders of other countries. For example, in November 2015, after the Turkish air force shot down a Russian jet, the Kremlin held Ankara accountable by cutting off not only all top-level contacts, but also the Russian-Turkish relationship in its entirety. Only Turkish President Recep Erdoğan’s letter of apology nine months later to Russian President Vladimir Putin resuscitated that relationship.
Why is it impossible to have a dialog like that — direct and open, albeit unflinching — with the British government?
Because the Anglo-Saxon elite that has ruled Britain and half of the world for the last three centuries sees itself as a special caste entitled to special rights. They have never been in the habit of apologizing to anyone.
Actually, they enjoy quite a long history of feeding their own people to sheep.The enclosures erected in the English countryside in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were at their heart a means of forcibly depriving the English peasantry of their access to arable land, which was then turned over to big sheep farms. Tens of thousands of people were driven from what had been common land to become vagabonds and beggars. Many perished from hunger and disease. But instead of doing battle against the poverty it had created, the government battled against the poor themselves. Specially drafted laws against vagrancy demanded that those who fell afoul be cruelly beaten, enslaved, and executed. Seventy-two thousand people were put to death in England in just the first half of the 16th century.
Image on the right: King Henry VIII
Likely this treatment of their own population can be explained by the fact that peasants in England belonged to an entirely different ethnic group than that of the aristocracy, who were descended from the Norman army that conquered that island in the 11th century and also the Saxon nobility, which later emerged as the ruling dynasties. The Anglo-Saxon elite developed not just a contemptuous, but a downright racist attitude towards their subjects, elevating themselves into a special caste with a special law of morality.
The genocide of the Irish, which the English carried out for centuries, certainly deserves special mention. When Oliver Cromwell‘s troops invaded Ireland in 1649 that was only one of the most egregious episodes from that history. Over 40% of the Irish population died as a result of that campaign.
In the 17th century — the early days of Britain’s growing maritime and colonial empire — London began a pattern of horrifying abuse of the indigenous populations of its conquered countries, almost to the point of their physical extermination. The British aristocracy considered the native peoples of the Americas, India, Africa, and China all to be races of a lower order. No rules or laws protected them.
Millions of members of the aboriginal communities were butchered in the English colonies in North America, Asia, Africa, and Australia. The mass slaughter of aborigines raised no more eyebrows than did hunting. In Tasmania in 1830, British soldiers orchestrated a massacre of native inhabitants who had the effrontery to be “bad-mannered.” First they gunned down the men and then beat the women and children to death.
In the 1950s, reacting to what is known as the Mau Mau Uprising waged by the natives of Kenya against the English regime to protest their seizures of land from the indigenous inhabitants, the British massacred about 300,000 Africans and drove another 1.5 million into concentration camps. It is worth noting that the world’s first concentration camps were established in South Africa by Britain’s Lord Herbert Kitchener to imprison Boer families during the Second Boer War of 1899-1902.
London’s predatory colonial policies often created genuine humanitarian disasters in the countries under British occupation. In India, tens of millions died from mass starvation, which became a commonplace event under British rule. The British attitude toward it all was eloquently expressed by Sir Winston Churchill himself, who in 1943 had this to say about the famine in Bengal:
“I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.”
British government continued its policy of “forced export” of food from India in 1876-1879, while the famine swept among its people. Estimated 10.3 million people starved to death most of which were in South India.
In the 19th century, London began a brisk trade of selling opium to China, making huge profits while simultaneously undermining Chinese society and government. In an attempt to rescue his country, the Chinese emperor began to seize and destroy those caches of opium in 1839. London reacted by launching a war in which China was defeated and forced to accept the crippling terms offered by the British state-sponsored drug mafia. The British elite, including the British royal family, made a fortune off of this. But China paid a horrifying price — entire generations perished in a narcotic haze that mentally and physically degraded the Chinese people. However, London’s official narrative would have us believe that the opium wars laid the foundation for the development of democracy in China.
Do you think that London ever apologized to the Chinese for the opium wars or for its policy of doping up their native population? Even in 1997 when Hong Kong was returned to China? On the contrary — in his private correspondence, which was later leaked to the press, Prince Charles referred to China’s leaders at that time as “appalling old waxworks.”
One would have to be very naive to expect an apology from the British elite. The former Labour PM, Tony Blair, who orchestrated the Iraq War along with George W. Bush, never apologized for the invasion of that country in 2003. He never said he was sorry even after it had been proven that Baghdad possessed no weapons of mass destruction, which had been the pretext for the attack by the Western coalition. When, after many years of trying to bring Blair to justice, he finally did express his regrets, it was only for “some mistakes he made in planning the conflict … and its aftermath,” but never for having deliberately exaggerated the intelligence findings in order to unleash a war that ultimately destroyed Iraq and resulted in chaos, terror, and hundreds of thousands of dead.
Of course, some decent and honorable people have always been part of British political circles. It’s just that as a rule the “free” British press tries to turn them into whipping boys or mad hatters or to dismiss them using that handy label of “odd man out.”
Jeremy Corbyn (image on the left) is one member of the British elite who fits that bill today.
The fact that he is now the leader of the linchpin of the opposition, the Labor Party, which has outstripped the ruling Conservatives in popularity, is a unique situation that reflects the deep crisis into which British politics has stumbled. His success was as big a surprise for the British elite as Donald Trump’s rise to power was for their American counterparts.
The fact that Corbyn currently only holds the reins of power in his own party and would have to win the parliamentary elections at a minimum in order to take the helm of his country is another issue. If the Brexit talks become deadlocked or Parliament votes down the agreement that May’s cabinet will have to sign this year with the European Union, Great Britain may be looking at a snap election. And at that point, the Corbyn-led Labour Party has a chance of winning.
That is why we have seen such aggressive attempts to depose this political figure. One of those attacks “oddly enough” coincided with Corbyn’s statement on the “Skripal incident.” While supporting May’s position against Russia, Corbyn also raised the question of whether there was any real proof of Russian fingerprints. Soon the press began a campaign to accuse Corbyn of … anti-Semitism.
Jeremy Corbyn might well become the prime minister of Great Britain — and then one British political tradition could be shattered. Because then the whole world would have to deal with someone who is not a representative of the usual British elite, reflecting the interests of an extremely limited stratum of society, but rather the foremost representative of his country, a man who has the support of a majority of its citizens, a man of honor who is ready to reliably defend their interests and respect his nation’s partners in international discourse.
The US media has seized on the latest claims by CIA-backed groups of a poison gas attack on civilians to demand a further escalation of the US-led war for regime-change in Syria and an increased confrontation with Russia.
The Syrian government claims that one of its airbases, in Homs province, has already come under missile attack. While the Pentagon is denying that it has launched any strikes on Syria yet, the rhetoric of the Trump administration indicates that preparations are being made for stepped-up military operations.
As with previous allegations of chemical weapons’ use, the public is being inundated with unverified footage of suffering victims, while government officials and the corporate media, prior to any investigation and without any substantiation, declare the government of Bashar al-Assad and its Iranian and Russian allies to be guilty of a war crime.
Within minutes, the New York Times and the Washington Post dashed out breathless articles placing the blame for the alleged attack at the feet of the Syrian and Russian governments. The Guardian declared in an editorial that
“Syria’s renewed use of chemical weapons against its own people at the weekend is shameless and barbaric.”
The current claims are no more credible than those that preceded it. The official narrative that Assad carried out a gas attack in Eastern Ghouta in 2013 was used to prepare a massive US air strike that was canceled at the last minute by the Obama administration—a retreat that earned Obama furious recriminations that continue to the present. Subsequent investigations proved that the attack was actually launched by US-backed “rebels” in conjunction with the Turkish government.
The alleged gas attack that was used in April 2017 to justify the major US cruise missile assault on a Syrian air base was similarly exposed to have resulted from an air strike on a “rebel” poison gas facility.
The previous pretexts for military escalation were staged by the CIA and its proxy forces in Syria. The latest provocation is no different.
There is no credible evidence concerning the claimed attack in the Eastern Ghouta city of Douma, a few miles from the Syrian capital. There are video clips that prove nothing, since they could have been manufactured at any time and edited to serve the purpose. The sole on-the-spot accounts come from the White Helmets, celebrated by the media as a rescue organization, but affiliated with the anti-Assad “rebels” and largely funded by the United States, Britain, Germany and other imperialist powers. This includes $23 million from the US Agency for International Development, a longtime front for the CIA.
The Trump White House has denounced the alleged atrocity, with officials making the usual warning, prior to military action, that “everything is on the table.” The US National Security Council (NSC) will convene Monday for the first time under newly appointed chief John Bolton, who played a major role in the Iraq War and has publicly advocated bombing both Iran and North Korea. The NSC will recommend military options to the president.
Any such action would bring with it the imminent threat of a wider war. Both Iranian advisers and Russian military personnel are integrated with the Syrian government forces and could well be hit in any significant US military strike, triggering demands for retaliation in both countries.
A wider conflict is the deliberate aim of the US military-intelligence apparatus. For a month, the world stage has been dominated by a British-American campaign against Russia, centered on the supposed poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a British spy, and his daughter Yulia, in Salisbury, England. There has been an escalating campaign of accusations, expulsions of Russian officials, and suggestions that the incident amounts to a nerve gas attack on Britain by Moscow, i.e., an act of war.
Last week, however, the official narrative of Russian government poisoning collapsed. The British chemical weapons authority announced that it could not determine the source of the supposed poison and both Skripals were reported to be recovering—making nonsense of the claim that they had been poisoned by a deadly nerve gas manufactured in Russia.
The new media hysteria over a poison gas attack in Syria serves to divert attention from the collapse of the Skripal provocation, while providing a fresh pretext for escalating the offensive against Russia.
There is an additional reason for the focus on Syria. Over the past week, President Trump had publicly questioned continuing the US intervention in that country, given the debacles suffered by the CIA-backed Islamist forces and the consolidation of control over most of the country’s population centers by the Assad government. He initially declared that US troops would leave Syria shortly, only to reverse himself after intense pressure from the Pentagon and CIA, Congress and the media. The Douma incident has put an end to such wavering.
As the New York Times noted Sunday night:
“Days after President Trump said he wanted to pull the United States out of Syria, Syrian forces hit a suburb of Damascus with bombs that rescue workers said unleashed toxic gas. Within hours, images of dead families sprawled in their homes threatened to change Mr. Trump’s calculus on Syria, possibly drawing him deeper into an intractable Middle Eastern war that he hoped to leave.”
The “rebel” group now holding out in Douma, Jaysh al-Islam, part of the Islamist opposition to Assad that includes the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda as well as the remnants of ISIS, has itself been credibly accused of using chlorine gas in the course of fighting against Kurdish forces and civilians in Aleppo in 2016. That charge, made by the Kurds, was given extensive publicity by Voice of America, the propaganda arm of the US government.
It is possible that Syrian warplanes struck a weapons cache belonging to the rebel group, causing the gas to leak out. More likely, the poison gas was deliberately released by Jaysh al-Islam, at behest of its CIA backers, to provide a pretext for US military intervention. Assuming, that is, that the reports of poison gas exposure are not simply manufactured by the US intelligence agencies for rebroadcast by a servile media.
What is least likely, from a political standpoint, is that the Assad government, just as it was on the brink of final victory in Eastern Ghouta after more than five years of bitter fighting, should suddenly unleash a poison gas attack, which would have no military value but would invite a savage response from the Trump administration and the other Western powers. A Syrian government statement pointed this out, declaring that “an army that is progressing quickly… does not need to use any kind of chemical weapons.”
According to Al Jazeera and Russian news sources, Jaysh al-Islam has been so thoroughly defeated that it has struck an agreement to completely withdraw all its militia and their families from Douma over the next 48 hours or so. Russian troops will reportedly move in to take control of the city.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry rebuffed the US claims of a gas attack in Douma.
“Such claims and allegations by the Americans and some Western countries point to a new plot against the Syrian government and people, and are an excuse to take military action against them,” a spokesman told the press.
The Russian government denounced the US campaign over the supposed gas attack as a political provocation aimed at justifying deeper US military intervention in the Syrian civil war.
“The spread of bogus stories about the use of chlorine and other poisonous substances by government forces continues,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. “We have warned several times recently against such dangerous provocations. The aim of such deceitful speculation, lacking any kind of grounding, is to shield terrorists… and to attempt to justify possible external uses of force.”
The latest provocation follows a well-worn pattern, from the lies over Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” to the present. The American intelligence agencies give the signal. Nonstop coverage is immediately launched on cable television, then demands for action are made by the White House and congressional leaders, boosted by editorials written by CIA mouthpieces such as the New York Times.
The brazen lies of the media are accompanied by breathtaking hypocrisy. The Times, the Washington Post, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and company downplay and cover up the atrocities carried out by American forces and their allies—the incineration of Mosul and Raqqa, the gunning down of demonstrators in Gaza by the Israeli military, the mass killings in Yemen carried out with US support by Saudi Arabia, even as its crown prince is feted by the US ruling elite, and the ongoing slaughter in Afghanistan.
The overwhelming responsibility for the continuing carnage and suffering in Syria—as well as in Iraq, Yemen and throughout the Middle East—rests squarely with US imperialism, which has launched one war after another based on lies in an attempt to establish control over the region and its vital energy resources. The prospect of US strikes in response to the allegations of a chemical attack urgently poses the danger of a wider war and the need for an international working class movement against war and for socialism.
In her daily press conference on 5th April, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, mentioned a quiet resentment and fury that is building up amongst ordinary Russians over the way the Government of the United Kingdom has handled the case of Sergei and Yulia Skripal.
Strange though it may seem, I sense a similar feeling of anger and resentment building up here in the UK, as it becomes clearer and clearer that the official narrative has little or no connection with reality.
The anger and frustration is increasingly being displayed on comment boards underneath pieces reporting on the issue. And the feeling is not confined to those who would normally be labelled “conspiracy theorists”. It appears that even many of those who would not normally question official statements can see that something is seriously wrong with all this.
More specifically, from whence comes this feeling? Here are just 20 of the many reasons for this growing anger:
1. It comes from being asked to believe frankly outlandish claims – such as the one that is central to the whole incident, that the Skripals, who are very much alive and well, were poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent with a toxicity 5-8 times that of VX.
2. It comes from the way that our Government recklessly accused another country – a nuclear-armed country at that – of committing a crime before the investigation into the incident had established the most basic of facts.
3. It comes from the fact that the UK Government has prejudiced and politicised the investigation with their claims before facts, their verdict without evidence, their sentence without proof.
4. It comes from the fact that the UK Government refused to go through the internationally established protocols for cases such as these. For instance, it only wrote to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on 14th March — the same day that Theresa May stood up in the House of Commons and formally accused the Russian Government of culpability.
5. It comes from the fact that the British Government, which repeatedly speaks about what it calls “British Values”, discarded some of the most basic legal concepts that have formed a part of real “British Values” for centuries, such as due process and the concept of innocent until proven guilty.
6. It comes from the way that the British Government has refused to allow those they have accused to see any of the supposed evidence against them, preferring instead to use spurious and circular nonsense such as the arsonist shouldn’t investigate his own fire.
7. It comes from the fact that the Government attempted to lead the public into believing that the Skripals were poisoned by a substance that must have come from Russia, because apparently only the Russians were capable of producing it – a claim that is demonstrably false.
8. It comes from knowing that Boris Johnson was quite prepared to lie to the public, and instead of facing up to his misdeeds like a man and resigning, he has instead behaved like the great supine, protoplasmic invertebrate jelly he is – to borrow his own phrase – slithering and twisting his way around his own actions by acting as if nothing has happened, and that anyone who raises questions about his fitness for office is working for the enemy.
9. It comes from the labelling of those who have questioned the increasingly preposterous claims as “useful idiots” or “Kremlin stooges” or even outright traitors, for even daring to ask for clarification on the most basic points.
10. It comes from the way that the media has marched lock-step in line with the Government, refusing to ask the most obvious and basic questions, such as the ones I set out here and here.
11. It comes from the curious way that events seem to “happen” only after other events appear to force them to “happen”, such as the announcement of Sergei Skripal’s miraculous recovery from being in a coma, which came a day after the leaked transcript of the telephone conversation between Yulia and Viktoria Skripal in which Yulia stated that he was well.
12. It comes from the way that attempts have been made to make “facts” fit the narrative, such as the theory, first touted more than three weeks after the incident, that the Skripals were poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent at their front door – an explanation which looks to be contrived in order to explain the curious anomaly that Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey was said to have become ill after visiting Mr Skripal’s house.
13. It comes from the fact that the Government and the media have refused to report in any meaningful way on the connection between Mr Skripal and Pablo Millier, his MI6 recruiter and fellow Salisbury resident, and on Mr Miller’s connection with Christopher Steele – author of the Trump Dossier. The connection may ultimately be irrelevant to the case, but it is surely of interest at present.
14. It comes from the illegal and frankly immoral way that the UK Government has repeatedly denied consular access to the Skripals, which it is obliged to give under Articles 36 and 37 of the 1963 Vienna Convention and Article 35 (1) of the 1965 Consular Convention.
15. It comes from the way that Viktoria Skripal, who is quite obviously keen to see her uncle and her cousin, has been denied a visa under some absurd pretence of her application not meeting UK immigration rules.
16. It comes from the way that the Skripals appear to be being denied consular access, denied access to their relatives, and – so far as I can work out – denied access to legal representation. In other words, it looks increasingly as if they are being denied the most basic of legal and familial rights, and Yulia’s comments in her conversation with her cousin on 5th April do not inspire any confidence that this is not the case.
17. It comes from the way that the existence of Mr Skripal’s pets was only mentioned by the media on 6th April, and this only after Maria Zakharova asked a pointed question about what had happened to them in her daily briefing of 5th April.
18. It comes from the fact that the condition of the pets – a cat and two guinea pigs – has been almost blithely reported in the media, despite the obvious truth that they died through neglect whilst Mr Skripal’s house was effectively in the care of the Metropolitan Police who are overseeing the investigation – did they not even go in and check!
19. It comes from the fact that despite culpability having been apportioned after a few days, it is clear that the investigation has still not established the most basic of facts, with no suspect being mentioned or hinted at, but rather we have been fed a steady diet of increasingly outlandish and spurious claims about the location of the poisoning – the bench, the restaurant, the car, the suitcase, the flowers, the door handle, the buckwheat.
20. But most of all, it comes simply from that feeling we are being taken for a ride, and are being treated like utter imbeciles by a Government that feels it can make extraordinary accusations and simply expect the public to “trust us”.
It pains me to say all that. But it is so. These are not the observations of some tin-foil hat wearing anti-Government anarchist. Rather, they are the sober reflections of a Burkean, small c conservative — one who firmly believes in free and responsible Government, in the rule of law, in due process, in innocent until proven guilty, and who hates anything like the whiff of anarchy in the air.
Yet my fear is that as more and more of this sordid affair comes to light, and as the bizarre and frankly reckless behaviour of the UK Government comes in for serious scrutiny, that quiet sense of anger which has been building up amongst a public that realises it has been repeatedly misled, is unlikely to go away.
From Skripal to Chemical Attack: What Accusation Is Next?
Einstein said that the definition of insanity is to continue doing the same thing and expect different results. Isn’t this what the Russian government is doing when it continues to respond to false accusations and expects facts to have any bearing on the matter?
As soon as the British orchestration of the “Skripal poisoning” was exposed as part of the ongoing plan to demonize Russia, the next false flag event is staged. Again Syria is accused of a chemical attack against civilians. As the Syrian army is fighting successfully against Washington’s mercenaries euphemistically called “rebels” even by Russian media, the accusation of a chemical attack against civilians makes no sense. It is well known that the “White Helmets” are a Washington propaganda organization whose mission is to foster fake news about staged events.
Nevertheless, the Russians again rose to the bait. General Yury Yevtushenko said that as soon as Douma is liberated Russia will send specialists to collect data that will expose the accusation as a fabrication.
As if Washington will care. Washington has already declared that Russia is responsible no matter who did it.
As long as Russia keeps responding to false charges, Washington’s strategy of keeping Russia on the defensive responding to accusations will continue to work.
The fallout from the Salisbury nerve agent attack reminds us of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which was the most immediate catalyst – of many parallel narrative and sequences of events – that ultimately resulted in World War I. We are not alone in this reasoning, as one high-level retired Russian general warns the Salisbury poisoning could lead to the “last war in the history of mankind.”
Ret. Lieutenant-General Evgeny Buzhinsky — who served in the Russian Armed Forces for more than forty years — said relations between Russia and Washington could become “worse” than the climax of the Cold War and “end up in a very, very bad outcome” following the nerve gas attack in the United Kingdom.
More than 150 Russian diplomats have been expelled from 25 countries — including 23 from the United Kingdom since western nations accused Russia of being the sole actor responsible for using deadly chemical weapons on Sergei Skripal and his daughter in their Salisbury home.
Buzhinsky, who is now the senior vice president of the Russian Center for Policy Studies (PIR Center), told BBC Radio Today program:
“Please, when you say the world, you mean EU and United States and some other countries … you see it’s a cold war, it’s worse than the Cold War because if the situation will develop in the way this (is) now, I’m afraid that it will end up in a very, very bad outcome.”
Nicholas Robinson, a British presenter on the BBC’s Today program pressed Buzhinsky on what he meant by “worse than a cold war,” to which the Ret. Russian Lieutenant-General responded with this bombshell: today’s current situation is spiraling out of control and could develop into a “real war.”
The Daily Express shares a chilling transcript of Buzhinsky’s conversation on BBC:
He said: “Worse than a cold war is a real war. It will be the last war in the history of the mankind.”
“Not the Salisbury poisoning but all the actions.”
“You see the pressure from the United States, that you say the pressure is going to continue, what are you going to achieve? You are going to achieve the regime change, it’s useless. You don’t know Russians. The more external pressure, the more the society is solidified around the President.”
When asked how the dispute would lead to a real war, Mr Buzhinsky accused the UK of not wanting to discuss the Salisbury attack.
“Let’s start discussing,” he said. “You don’t want to discuss. You say Russia should change its behaviour, it’s not the kind of talk or compromise we need.
“Okay, you expelled diplomats. We expelled diplomats. You further expel, what is the next step? The breach of diplomatic relations.”
“After that, I said it may lead to nowhere. Actually, you are cornering Russia. To corner, Russia is a very dangerous thing.”
Mr Buzhinsky claimed it was “nonsense” Russia was behind the attack as President Vladimir Putin had no benefit out of the attack, which took place before the Russian Presidential election. The comments come after Mr Putin’s foreign minister accused Theresa May of “resorting to open lies”.
He said: “I believe that our Western partners, I mean primarily the United Kingdom, the United States and some countries that blindly follow them, have cast away all decency, they are resorting to open lies, blatant misinformation.”
Between cold, proxy and trade wars, as time moves on in the Trump era, it seems like the world has gone haywire. While history tends not to repeat itself – but rather rhymes – the fatalistic opinion of a veteran Russian expert and observer such as Buzhinsky has to be taken seriously. We can only hope that his forecast for a “last war” is wrong.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
Tales from the Conspiratum 