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They Only Serve Themselves

September 6, 2020

They Only Serve Themselves


Caspar David Friedrich The Monk by the Sea c1809
“The Kremlin” poisoned their “fierce rival” Navalny with the infamous deadly agent novichok. That is the headline. Only, the German accusation in that direction doesn’t say novichok, its says a “cholinesterase inhibitor”, of which novichok is just one example, was used. The news outlets must be thinking that at least after the Skripal case, enough people will recognize the term, and let’s not confuse them.The Germans claim they have “unequivocal proof” (eindeutiger Beweis) for this. While the Russian doctors who initially treated Navalny after he fell ill on a flight from Tomsk to Omsk (or was that the other way around?!) said he showed zero signs of poisoning. But yeah, they’re Russians, so they can’t be trusted, right? They all squander their Hippocratic oaths at the feet of the great malevolent dictator Trump Putin. You’re familiar with the parable about “all Cretans lie”?

“Merkel spokesman Seibert said the German government will inform its partners in the European Union and NATO about the test results..” NATO? What do they have to do with anything? How does the alleged poisoning of a two-bit (2% in the polls) Russian “politician” link to NATO? Is Navalny himself linked to NATO? Where does NATO come in to the conversation? How much does the CIA pay Navalny anyway?

The thing, the problem, is that it makes no difference anymore even if this particular instance has a kernel of truth in it. Because there have been so many of them, and they’re all “based” on non-evidence, circumstantial “evidence”, stuff that you wouldn’t get a conviction on in any western court. For good reason.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Skripal Case Is Being Pushed Down The Memory Hole With Libya And Aleppo

May 22, 2018

The Skripal Case Is Being Pushed Down The Memory Hole With Libya And Aleppo

On the fourth of March, in the sleepy British cathedral town of Salisbury, an ex-spy named Sergei Skripal was poisoned by an assassin with the most deadly nerve agent known to man.

The Russian government was immediately blamed by a shocked and outraged world. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson assured the people of Great Britain that “There’s no doubt” that Moscow was responsible. In a large and sudden leap forward in cold war escalations, Russian diplomats were thrown out of countries all around the globe, including my own Australia, in a show of solidarity with the United Kingdom. It was the largest collective ejection of Russian diplomats in history.

Two months after his earth-shattering assassination, as the world stared spellbound at the weekend’s immensely popular PR spectacle of a royal wedding, Sergei Skripal was quietly discharged from the hospital he’d been staying at. The BBC reports that he is walking and approaching complete recovery.

Wait a second. Haven’t I seen this Python skit before?

So to recap, an ex-spy who had been retired and strategically irrelevant for years was reportedly poisoned by the Kremlin with Novichok, a scary Russian-sounding word which refers to a group of extremely deadly and fast-acting nerve agents that start shutting down the body’s muscles and respiratory system within 30 seconds to two minutes. Except in the case of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia it was several hours with a leisurely stroll, a meal, and beers in between.

The poison was placed in Yulia Skripal’s suitcase. Actually no, they got that wrong, it was the air vents in their car. Wait, no, that doesn’t work either. Maybe it was administered via weaponized miniature drone! Wait, no, it was the family’s car door handle. Actually, scratch that, it was the front door of the house. Definitely the front door of the house. We’re absolutely sure.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Russia Exposes British Lies on Skripal, but Trail Leads to US

April 21, 2018

Russia Exposes British Lies on Skripal, but Trail Leads to US

Russia Exposes British Lies on Skripal, but Trail Leads to US

Moscow says it has proof that the agent used in the UK attack is a chemical weapon patented in the US. So was this a covert operation aimed at ratcheting up tensions between the West and Russia?

The sensational case of the poisoning of the ex-MI6 agent and former Russian military intelligence colonel Sergei Skripal on March 4 in Salisbury, in the UK, is becoming more and more curious. Under a blinding spotlight from Moscow, the British allegation regarding a Russian hand in the poisoning of Skripal is getting exposed. An engrossing plot in big-power politics is also unfolding. There is stuff here for a Le Carre novel.

Are we witnessing a replay of the false flag Gulf of Tonkin attack of August 1964, the imaginary “incident” concocted by the US military to provide legal and political justification for deploying American forces in South Vietnam and for commencing open warfare against North Vietnam?

To recap, Britain alleged without any empirical evidence that a military grade nerve agent of a type known as Novichok was used in Salisbury, saying it was originally developed in the former Soviet Union, and therefore, Moscow’s hand – possibly, even President Vladimir Putin’s hand – was “highly likely”.

Moscow has maintained, on the other hand, that it had destroyed all its chemical weapons and an Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) investigation verified and testified to that.

The British allegation quickly morphed into a large-scale expulsion of Russian diplomats (over 100 of them) by western capitals, under heavy pressure from Washington and London. The US alone expelled 60 Russian diplomats, while Britain expelled 23.

Egg on May’s face

Britain is studiously ignoring the Russian requests for samples of the chemical agent used in the Salisbury attack and for consular access to be granted to the former spy’s daughter Yulia. Meanwhile, Britain instead approached the OPCW to investigate.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Russia demolishes UK poisoning hoax during emergency security council meeting (Video)

April 6, 2018

Russia demolishes UK poisoning hoax during emergency security council meeting (Video)

Russian UN envoy exposes UK poisoning hoax during security council meeting.

Russia’s UN envoy blasted the UK’s attempt to blame the poisoning Sergei and Yulia Skripal on Moscow, describing the entire hoax as a “theater of absurd.”

The extraordinary UN Security Council meeting was requested by Russia, following the announcement made by the secretive British Porton Down chemical laboratory, that it had not established that the Novichok nerve agent used in the poisoning was of Russian origin.

According to RT, top British officials explicitly cited the Porton Down laboratory when pinning the blame on Moscow, so following this revelation their theory started to fall apart, said Vasily Nebenzia, noting that the UK’s secret agencies rushed to help the government, producing new claims based on some “intelligence data.”

Nebenzia asked a series of questions pointing to inconsistencies of the UK’s narrative.

“I don’t even know how to comment on this. It’s some sort of the theater of absurd. You couldn’t have come up with better fake story?”

“Why did we have to wait eight years and [then] decided to [attack the Skripals] two weeks before the elections and several weeks before the world cup? Why did we release him from the country in the first place? Why do that in extremely public and dangerous fashion.”

RT reports…

The fact that the victims of the nerve agent, which is believed to be among the deadliest, managed to survive the attack has also raised serious questions, Nebenzia said. It could be explained only if an antidote had been administered to them immediately after the exposure. British officials, however, insisted that no antidote was used, since none existed in the first place. The Skripals managed to walk around for four hours after the exposure, according to the version by the British authorities, yet the police officer who found them lost consciousness immediately.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Russia ‘Novichok’ Hysteria Proves Politicians and Media Haven’t Learned the Lessons of Iraq

April 2, 2018

Russia ‘Novichok’ Hysteria Proves Politicians and Media Haven’t Learned the Lessons of Iraq

The current state of anti-Russia hysteria is reminiscent of earlier dark chapters of American history, including the rush to war in Iraq of the early 2000s and McCarthyism of the 1950s, Patrick Henningsen observes.

If there’s one thing to be gleaned from the current atmosphere of anti-Russian hysteria in the West, it’s that the US-led sustained propaganda campaign is starting to pay dividends. It’s not only the hopeless political classes and media miscreants who believe that Russia is hacking, meddling and poisoning our progressive democratic utopia – with many pinning their political careers to this by now that’s it’s too late for them to turn back.

Donald Trump and Theresa May during a NATO summit in Brussels. Photo Reuters

As it was with Iraq in 2003, these dubious public figures require a degree of public support for their policies, and unfortunately many people do believe in the grand Russian conspiracy, having been sufficiently brow-beaten into submission by around-the-clock fear mongering and official fake news disseminated by government and the mainstream media.

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

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

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Unanswered questions

March 22, 2018

Unanswered questions

Putin

Not so fast, Mr Bond…

So the truth is finally out. Russia poisoned the ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter on British soil using the Russian-made nerve agent Novichok. The Russian ambassador to Britain has been given until the end of today to explain his country’s degree of guilt (not whether Russia is guilty or not, just how guilty it is) following which unspecified sanctions will be imposed. The BBC says so, so it must be true:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43381880

So that’s it then: case closed. Or is it? There are several things about this case which I find deeply troubling. Let’s start by looking at the facts, insofar as they can be established.

According to the BBC, “Colonel Skripal is a retired Russian military intelligence officer who was convicted of passing the identities of Russian intelligence agents working undercover in Europe to the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. He was jailed for 13 years by Russia in 2006. In July 2010, he was one of four prisoners released by Moscow in exchange for 10 Russian spies arrested by the FBI as part of a swap. He was later flown to the UK.”  Since then, he has lived in relative obscurity in Salisbury, England until last week when he was found in a critical condition on a bench outside a shopping centre, together with his daughter. They had just been to a nearby pub/restaurant, and traces of the Novichok poison were also found there, suggesting that it may have been administered there.

Some of these facts are disputed – for example, Skripal’s family say that he was not a double agent and that the allegations against him were fabricated. But let’s suppose that all of the above is true. Here are my problems with it:

Firstly, where is Russia’s motive for killing him? They had him in their custody between 2006-2010 and presumably, if they wanted to kill him, they could easily have done it then, and just made him disappear quietly, and few people would have known or cared. But they didn’t. So why wait until now, 8 years later, and attempt to kill him in the full glare of international publicity?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Russia Did It!

March 17, 2018

Russia Did It!

Or maybe not…
This past week saw an enormous outpouring of respect and admiration for Stephen Hawking upon his passing.

In contrast to his frail health in life, his contributions to our understanding of the universe were prodigious and robust. Hawking’s elevation of rational and intellectual truth above all else, even his failing body, inspired a generation of science lovers.

Perhaps, too, he represented something in desperately short supply in today’s world: intellectual integrity.

Our lives are now fraught with easily-disproved fantasies, frauds and fictions being pushed to us through the media by institutions with deliberate agendas trying to engineer specific outcomes.

Those of us with a pragmatic mindset and an ability to recall (even quite recent) history, often find ourselves with mouths literally agape at the obvious deceptions being foisted upon what appears to be a terminally-gullible public.

Why do so many continue to blindly trust the same government agencies that have brazenly and repeatedly lied to them over the past recent years?

If this craziness continues for much longer, at a minimum, we’ll face a punishing market correction/crash from which there will be no meaningful recovery in the lifetime of those reading this article.

At worst, we face the prospect of World War III, fought with nuclear weapons. If that were to happen, the lifetimes of many reading this article will be a lot shorter.

Yes, it’s that serious.

Non-stop Fictions

I risk running afoul of one of the strongest propaganda campaigns of my lifetime when I state that I’m not at all worried about Russia.

Nor am I swayed by the long parade of recent attempts to convince me that Russia is behind nearly every ill action. This includes the recent nerve agent attack in the UK.

I have no informed opinion yet on whether Russia or a different party was behind this act. But I can tell you that the burden of proof to establish Russia’s culpability has not even remotely been met.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

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