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Author Topic: 9/11 debate - enter at your own risk!  (Read 977666 times)

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Of A Type Developed By Liars

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/03/of-a-type-developed-by-liars/

I have now received confirmation from a well placed FCO source that Porton Down scientists are not able to identify the nerve agent as being of Russian manufacture, and have been resentful of the pressure being placed on them to do so. Porton Down would only sign up to the formulation “of a type developed by Russia” after a rather difficult meeting where this was agreed as a compromise formulation. The Russians were allegedly researching, in the “Novichok” programme a generation of nerve agents which could be produced from commercially available precursors such as insecticides and fertilisers. This substance is a “novichok” in that sense. It is of that type. Just as I am typing on a laptop of a type developed by the United States, though this one was made in China.

To anybody with a Whitehall background this has been obvious for several days. The government has never said the nerve agent was made in Russia, or that it can only be made in Russia. The exact formulation “of a type developed by Russia” was used by Theresa May in parliament, used by the UK at the UN Security Council, used by Boris Johnson on the BBC yesterday and, most tellingly of all, “of a type developed by Russia” is the precise phrase used in the joint communique issued by the UK, USA, France and Germany yesterday:

This use of a military-grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia, constitutes the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since the Second World War.

When the same extremely careful phrasing is never deviated from, you know it is the result of a very delicate Whitehall compromise. My FCO source, like me, remembers the extreme pressure put on FCO staff and other civil servants to sign off the dirty dossier on Iraqi WMD, some of which pressure I recount in my memoir Murder in Samarkand. She volunteered the comparison to what is happening now, particularly at Porton Down, with no prompting from me.

Separately I have written to the media office at OPCW to ask them to confirm that there has never been any physical evidence of the existence of Russian Novichoks, and the programme of inspection and destruction of Russian chemical weapons was completed last year.

Did you know these interesting facts?

OPCW inspectors have had full access to all known Russian chemical weapons facilities for over a decade – including those identified by the “Novichok” alleged whistleblower Mirzayanov – and last year OPCW inspectors completed the destruction of the last of 40,000 tonnes of Russian chemical weapons

By contrast the programme of destruction of US chemical weapons stocks still has five years to run

Israel has extensive stocks of chemical weapons but has always refused to declare any of them to the OPCW. Israel is not a state party to the Chemical Weapons Convention nor a member of the OPCW. Israel signed in 1993 but refused to ratify as this would mean inspection and destruction of its chemical weapons. Israel undoubtedly has as much technical capacity as any state to synthesise “Novichoks”.

Until this week, the near universal belief among chemical weapons experts, and the official position of the OPCW, was that “Novichoks” were at most a theoretical research programme which the Russians had never succeeded in actually synthesising and manufacturing. That is why they are not on the OPCW list of banned chemical weapons.

Porton Down is still not certain it is the Russians who have apparently synthesised a “Novichok”. Hence “Of a type developed by Russia”. Note developed, not made, produced or manufactured.

It is very carefully worded propaganda. Of a type developed by liars.

UPDATE

This post prompted another old colleague to get in touch. On the bright side, the FCO have persuaded Boris he has to let the OPCW investigate a sample. But not just yet. The expectation is the inquiry committee will be chaired by a Chinese delegate. The Boris plan is to get the OPCW also to sign up to the “as developed by Russia” formula, and diplomacy to this end is being undertaken in Beijing right now.

I don’t suppose there is any sign of the BBC doing any actual journalism on this?

Erratum – I originally typed “nerve gas” and not “nerve agent” in the first line – purely my error.


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I do find it very odd that the incident happened so close to Porton Down, and you can bet that USA, UK, Russia, China, Israel all have synthesized this same agent in their laboratories, no matter what the public facing story is.
False flag operation, to worsen relations between UK and Russia? But what is the motivation? I can understand Russia sending a message to potential traitors (the official story) but I can't figure out why some other state actor, especially the UK, would want to do this thing.
   

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I don't think Porton Down had anything to do with it, the close proximity to Skripal's location is either a 'coincidence' or Skripal was chosen as a target partly because he was located close to that location. The Russians also do not have the death penalty, they prefer to prosecute and imprison as punishment for moral corruption and Skripal had already served his time, his assassination would not have been ordered a week before the Presidential election! If it was an uncontrolled release of nerve agent it would have been indiscriminate and moved with the wind direction from the release point. An example of a wind dispersed chemical attack would be Khan Sheikoun:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=syria+chemical+attack+khan+sheikhoun&t=hf&ia=about

I put the search words rather than a direct link to an article so you can see how heavily biased the narrative is, all of the articles say Russia and Syria did it! All of them! For a more balanced evidence based debate I had to go directly to a website that covered this event in real time:

https://www.globalresearch.ca/search?q=khan+sheikoun&x=0&y=0

About a year ago the media tried to pin a Sarin attack on Assad to justify NATO intervention in Syria because the 'rebels' (either paid or ideological mercenaries) needed air support. This attempt failed and Russia pointed out it destroyed all of it's chemical weapons under the supervision of the OPCW, and Assad did the same. Assad was winning at this time, it was a major turning point in the proxy war and it would have been insanity to do the one thing that would bring in NATO air support for the rebel infantry.. wouldn't it ?

Next, 'Novichok' is a brand name not a specific type of agent like VX and there has been lot's of information which shows that other countries extracted the knowledge and personnel after the collapse of the Soviet Union, most notably the US itself! Lot's of ex Soviet states as well as many powers in the west and others probably have varied 'Novichok programs', to claim that “Russia did it” is infantile and premature before an investigation has taken place. The OPCW were not initially consulted at all and the UK failed to follow procedure and commenced immediately with 'Trial by media'.

False flag operation, to worsen relations between UK and Russia? But what is the motivation? I can understand Russia sending a message to potential traitors (the official story) but I can't figure out why some other state actor, especially the UK, would want to do this thing.

Yes it's a blatantly obvious false flag and the motive is to create a narrative seed so that when a large chemical weapon attack happens in Syria shortly peoples minds will already be primed to accept that the Russians are capable of doing this by pointing to the recent Skripal incident and shouting “Look, they just did it in the UK and now they are doing it in Syria!” They are creating a pretext for a NATO attack on Syria to further the 'Greater Israel' plan.

The narrative has changed again today:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-18/russian-double-agent-reportedly-poisoned-through-bmw-air-vents-38-others-sickened

Have you ever sat in a traffic jam behind a diesel car ? How about travelled through a tunnel busy with cars ? The smell of engine exhaust stinks your car out in seconds if you forget to press the air recirculation button on the dashboard.. it's not difficult to get a gas into a car, after all a gas is what you breathe, the ventilation system is designed to do that!

Lastly, the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats under the pretext that they are undisclosed intelligence agents, is a bit of a joke.. remember this:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/01/israel-apology-plot-uk-politicians-170108040326289.html

This was an actual Mossad agent caught on tape from within the embassy planning to subvert the UK government (he was fired within days) and the response from the UK was “move along, nothing to see here”. Until you realise that the countries that make up NATO and the EU + US are all vassal states it is easy to get fooled by the “show of solidarity”, in reality it is one body representing diverse Sovereign independence.

This is the latest article on the Skripal situation from The Saker's site for your interest:

The British Spy Skripal hoax

http://thesaker.is/the-british-spy-skripal-hoax/
« Last Edit: 2018-03-19, 05:08:37 by evolvingape »


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Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

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Shedding more "light" on the Salisbury Skripal Hoax:

Skripal Affair Motives

CIA-MI6 Poisoned Skripal


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For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.
   

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Interesting links they are..

The first translation interview with Alexander Dugin raises some interesting issues for me. It comes down to definition and perception, for example define 'England'. I am a patriot who believes in negotiation not confrontation, this is why I am here and why I do this, no other reason. Some would argue I am a traitor to my country while others celebrate my life and support my moral standing. If you can conflate the issues you can control minds with the narrative, but this is an immoral practice and not my chosen path.

"Betray the Homeland, and be ready to pay for it."

This is a disturbing quote, not because it is inaccurate but because it relies on definition and subjective perception for it's accuracy. For example, would a mother that reports her child for committing or planning to commit a premeditated murder, have betrayed her child from your point of view ? how about as perceived from the point of view of the child ? how about from the point of view of the victim ? or the general public point of view ? does it depend on who the child was going to kill ? I see and hear a lot of people wishing this fate on war criminals etc, but I don't support that. Very complicated issues and judgement should not be rushed into, ever.

The second op-ed by Ronald Thomas West is thought provoking and runs through some of the possible scenarios, but not all of them..

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/03/09/sergei-skripal-poisoning-did-daughter-unwittingly-carry-nerve-agent-into-ex-russian-spys-home.html

http://www.startribune.com/key-moments-in-the-case-of-former-spy-sergei-skripal/477168053/

It appears the police officer injured was poisoned at the home which rules out the BMW air vents theory.

It has been suggested that the daughter was the possible carrier of the nerve agent which is a narrative that supports the transport of the agent from Russia, but I don't believe that is the most probable scenario. It is much more likely that both Skripal and the daughter were targets to send a message, a so far mostly overlooked theory. Ever seen the film Dredd ? That line from Mama "I will kill you and the next generation of your family" keeps me up at night, especially with what I have read in the papers lately.. one thing is for sure, the narrative they ran with from day one was a pre-packaged, pre-prepared lie.


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Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
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Everyman decries immorality
'One Man's Terrorist is Another Man's Freedom Fighter'

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2009/11/one-mans-terrorist-is-another-mans-freedom-fighter.html

Often and thoughtlessly repeated, 'One man's terrorist in another man's freedom fighter' is one of those sayings that cry out for logical and philosophical analysis. Competent analysis will show that clear-thinking persons ought to avoid the saying.

Note first that while freedom is an end, terror is a means. So to call a combatant a terrorist is to say something about his tactics, his means for achieving his ends, while to call a combatant a freedom fighter is to say nothing about his tactics or means for achieving his ends. It follows that one and the same combatant can be both a terrorist and a freedom fighter. For one and the same person can employ terror as his means while having freedom as his end.


Suppose a Palestinian Arab jihadi straps on an explosive belt and detonates himself in a Tel Aviv pizza parlor. He is objectively a terrorist: he kills and maims noncombatants in furtherance of a political agenda which includes freedom from Israeli occupation. The fact that he is a freedom fighter does not make him any less a terrorist. Freedom is his end, but terror is his means. It is nonsense to say that he is a terrorist to Israelis and their supporters and a freedom fighter to Palestinians and their supporters. He is objectively both. It is not a matter of 'perception' or point of view or which side one is on.

Another Palestinian renounces terrorism and fights for freedom from occupation by the path of negotiation. He is objectively a freedom fighter and objectively no terrorist. A third case might be an Israeli terrorist who blows up a Palestinian hospital or mosque in revenge for Palestinian terrorist attacks. He is objectively a terrorist but objectively not a freedom fighter.

So there are two reasons to avoid 'One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.' The first is that it rests on a confusion of means and ends. Describing a combatant as a terrorist, I describe his means not his end; describing a combatant as a freedom fighter, I describe his end not his means. A second reason to avoid the saying is because the saying suggests falsely that there is no fact of the matter as to whether or not a person is a terrorist. There is: a combatant is a terrorist if and only if he employs terror as a tactic in the furtherance of his political goals. It doesn't matter what his goal or end is. It might be the noble one of freedom from oppression. Or it might be base one of domination and exploitation. What makes him a terrorist is the means he employs.

In brief, terror is a means not an end, and there is an objective fact of the matter whether a combatant is a terrorist or not. But what is a terrorist? I suggest that the following are all essential marks of a terrorist. I claim they are all individually necessary conditions for a combatant's being a terrorist; whether they are jointly sufficient I leave undecided. 'Terrorist' is used by different people in different ways. That is not my concern. My concern is how we ought to use the term if we intend to think clearly about the phenomenon of terrorism and keep it distinct from other phenomena in the vicinity.

1. A terrorist aims at a political objective. Criminals may 'terrorize' as when a loanshark microwaves a delinquent's cat, but criminals who terrorize are not terrorists because their aim is personal, not political. And although terrorists commit crimes, they are best not classified as criminals for the same reason. Treating the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center as criminal matters shows a lack of understanding of the nature of terrorism.

2. A terrorist does not discriminate between combatants and noncombatants. All are fair game, which is not to say that in a particular situation a terrorist might not have a reason not to target some combatants or some noncombatants. This distinguishes a terrorist organization such as Hezbollah from the Israeli Defense Forces. As a matter of policy, the IDF does not target noncombatants, whereas as a matter of policy Hezbollah targets anyone on the enemy side. The deliberate targeting of civilians also distinguishes terrorists from guerilla fighters.

3. A terrorist is not an agent of a state but of a nonstate or substate entity. A terrorist is neither a criminal (see #1 above) nor a warrior; a terrorist act is neither a criminal act nor an act of war; a terrorist organization is neither a criminal gang nor a state. Strictly speaking, only states make war.

Of course, a state (e.g. Iran) can arm and support and make use of a terrorist outfit (e.g. Hezbollah) in pursuit of a political objective (e.g., the destruction of Israel). But that does not elide the distinction between states and terrorist organizations. It is also clear that states sometimes 'terrorize'; but this is not a good reason to think of states as terrorist organizations, or some or all of their combatants as terrorists or of any of their acts as terrorist acts. The Allied firebombing of Dresden in February of 1945 was a deliberate targeting of combatants and noncombatants alike in clear violation of 'just war' doctrine. But whatever one's moral judgment of the Dresden attack or the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, none of these acts count as terrorist for the simple reason that they were the acts of states, not terrorist organizations. Some will bristle at this, but if one wants to think clearly about terrorism one must not confuse it with other things.

4. A terrorist is not a saboteur. Sabotage is one thing, terrorism another. Analytical clariy demands a distinction. Infecting computer networks with malware or attacking the power grid are acts of sabotage, but they are not strictly speaking acts of terrorism. An act is not terrorist unless it involves the killing or maiming of human beings or the threat thereof.

I am indebted to the discussion in Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want, Random House, 2006, Ch. 1

https://www.amazon.com/What-Terrorists-Want-Understanding-Containing/dp/1400064813


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Syria’s Eastern Ghouta militants prepare chemical attack provocation, Russian MoD tipped off

https://www.rt.com/news/421753-syria-ghouta-chemical-provocation/

Militants holed up in Eastern Ghouta are preparing to stage a “false flag” attack to accuse the Syrian government forces of using chemical weapons against civilians, Russia’s Defense Ministry said, citing a tip from a local.

On Monday, the Russian Reconciliation Center received a phone call from one of the residents of the al-Wanar quarter of Eastern Ghouta, who warned of possible preparations for a “provocation” with the use of chemical agents. According to the tip-off, Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) terrorists have placed “hermetically sealed containers,” which could contain poisonous substances, next to a self-engineered turbine on one of the roofs in the Damascus suburb.

“The terrorists, according to [the caller], could use those preparations to spray chemical agents in residential areas, which will lead to a large number of casualties among civilians,” Major-General Yuri Yevtushenko announced on Monday. “The mass poisoning of civilians will be used to accuse the government troops of the use of chemical weapons against peaceful citizens.”

This is not the first time Moscow has raised concerns about possible provocations using chemical agents in Syria. Russia believes that such an attack will be widely covered in the Western media and may ultimately be used as a pretext by the US-led coalition to launch strikes against Syrian government forces.

Washington repeatedly warned that it would conduct more air strikes against Syrian forces if chemical weapons are used in the country. French President Emmanuel Macron also promised to “strike” Syria if any evidence emerges that chemical weapons were used against civilians.

In January, just before various factions of Syrian society gathered for the Syrian National Congress in Sochi, reports of a chlorine gas attack on the outskirts of the Syrian capital were used to attack the legitimacy of the reconciliation process. At the time, former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson took advantage of the alleged attack to blame Russia for all the chemical weaponry-related incidents in Syria, regardless of who actually conducted it.

Since last month, Syrian government forces have been carrying out operation Damascus Steel to clear east Ghouta of armed Islamist units that have been terrorizing the locals for years. After the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution proposing a 30-day humanitarian ceasefire in Syria, the Russian Reconciliation Center has been focused on evacuating civilians out of militant-controlled east Ghouta.

“Since the beginning of the humanitarian operation, 79,702 people have been evacuated from the East Ghouta with the help of the Russian Centre for Reconciliation. Most of them are children,” the MoD noted Monday, adding that “their lives are out of danger now.”


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Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

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Everyman decries immorality
On Monday, the Russian Reconciliation Center received a phone call from one of the residents of the al-Wanar quarter of Eastern Ghouta, who warned of possible preparations for a “provocation” with the use of chemical agents. According to the tip-off, Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) terrorists have placed “hermetically sealed containers,” which could contain poisonous substances, next to a self-engineered turbine on one of the roofs in the Damascus suburb.

“The terrorists, according to [the caller], could use those preparations to spray chemical agents in residential areas, which will lead to a large number of casualties among civilians,” Major-General Yuri Yevtushenko announced on Monday. “The mass poisoning of civilians will be used to accuse the government troops of the use of chemical weapons against peaceful citizens.”

This is not the first time Moscow has raised concerns about possible provocations using chemical agents in Syria. Russia believes that such an attack will be widely covered in the Western media and may ultimately be used as a pretext by the US-led coalition to launch strikes against Syrian government forces.

Would be a good time to read the Saker's blog post if you have not read it:

The British Chemical Warfare against the Russians

http://thesaker.is/the-british-spy-skripal-hoax/

Bear in mind that so far no evidence at all has been made publicly available.. none.. only allegations that the event took place. A sample of 'Novichok' nerve agent only proves the British government have a sample of 'Novichok' nerve agent.. nothing else.. Where is Skripal, his daughter, the police officer and the dozens of people allegedly poisoned at the same time.. along with supporting doctors testimony ? Remind you of Sandy Hook ??


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Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
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Everyman decries immorality
Dr Kevin Barrett interviews the Saker

http://thesaker.is/dr-kevin-barrett-interviews-the-saker/#comments

source: https://www.patreon.com/posts/17657399 (you can listen to the interview here)

Kevin Barrett’s show notes: The Saker is one of the our best geopolitical analysts. In this interview we begin with issues from his recent article “When dealing with a bear hubris is suicidal,” which discusses the increasing absurdity of such obvious Western false flags as the “Skripal nerve gas attack”—par for the course for “an Empire built (and maintained) on lies, accepted on the basis of ignorance, justified by hypocrisy and energized by hysterics. This is what the ‘Western world’ stands for nowadays.”

Is the Empire’s pathological behavior rooted in Western arrogance and millenarianism dating back to medieval times? Is the current official elite religion of Anti-Religious Religious Fundamentalism (AARF) even more dangerously fanatical than traditional religious fundamentalism? Are Western elites secular humanists or satanists? Is there a meaningful difference between those categories? Why are they willing to risk nuclear war with over 500 million dead to push forward a hopelessly implausible scheme for a one-world empire? What can we do to stop them? These are some of the questions considered in this very stimulating hour of conversation.

Jonathan Revusky: Anti-Religious Religious Fanatics (ARRFs) are the real fundamentalist crazies!

https://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/12/28/arrf/


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Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
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Everyman decries immorality
Question Less! ‘Liberal’ witch-finders hunt for heretics in modern Britain

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/421860-liberals-corbyn-russia-witch-hunting/

What would Orwell make of it all? ‘Moderates’ support wars that ‘extremists’ oppose, ‘Free speech’ advocates call to shut down some TV stations, while a ‘Rights Activist’ wants children expelled from school on parentage grounds.
The narrowing of the parameters about what can and cannot be said by public figures in Britain was seen again last week, with the hysterical, McCarthyite witch hunt against those, like Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who simply asked questions about what the government had claimed in relation to the Salisbury poisonings. Corbyn was branded a traitor and an appeaser for doing what opposition leaders should be doing in a democracy – namely trying to hold the government to account. Evidence? You want to see evidence! You must be some kind of Kremlin stooge!

Never mind that the presumption of innocence is a hallmark of a fair judicial system and indeed a civilized country. The Sun says it was Putin who did it, and so does John Woodcock MP, so that settles it.  Trial by media and neocon propagandists has replaced due process.

Unlike in the 1970s, when Britain was truly a vibrant democracy, political debate is today vigorously policed with dissident voices hounded by obnoxious ‘Witch-finder Generals’ who clearly model themselves on the late Matthew Hopkins, a man who traveled East Anglia on horseback hunting for heretics. It was said of Hopkins that he had “no specific schooling for his role as witch-finder – he just came with a passionate belief in the righteousness of his own actions.” With such an attitude he’d surely have a nice job working for the Rupert Murdoch media empire today.

Truly, what a state we're in. People – believe it or not – have been banned from membership of political parties on the basis on tweets or Facebook postings they made years ago. Employers are contacted too if the ‘wrong’ views are expressed on social media. Everyone it seems must conform and only express 'politically correct' opinions which the 21st Century witch-finders deem acceptable. That means no questioning of the official War Party narrative on foreign policy – and joining in with the current Establishment-induced wave of Russophobia. Or else. Just look at the vile attacks made by ‘Inside the Tent’ state and corporate media journalists on Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, for his daring to challenge the official narrative on the Salisbury poisonings.

There have been some chilling statements made in the past week, but arguably none more so than those made in a Sunday newspaper column by Ruth Davidson, the ‘progressive’ leader of the Scottish Conservatives. In an article entitled in its hard copy version “Keeping our press free is the best way to counter Kremlin propaganda,” Davidson claimed that Britain was being poisoned “both literally and metaphorically” by “Russian aggression.” In order to protect Britain’s vigorous free media, we must “pull the plug” on RT.

I live less than 15 miles from where George Orwell is buried and I could swear I heard him turning in his grave on Sunday night. Repeat after me: To keep the press free we must close television stations… To keep the press free we must close television stations. War is Peace. Slavery is Freedom!

Davidson is one of a small but vociferous group of witch-finders who want RT taken off air. Lord Adonis is another. The unelected peer, whose only elected office was as a Lib Dem/SDP councilor in leafy North Oxford in the 1990s, was incensed when he saw RT’s witty adverts on the London Underground last year. “Russian state propaganda is no joke & it shouldn't be on London Underground,” the baron tweeted. He then said he would be taking the matter up with ‘the Commissioner.’ As Simon Rite noted for RT: “In simple terms: he doesn’t like the idea of a 'state-sponsored ' message which is not coming from his state, so wants to use the power of the state to make absolutely sure no one hears anything his state doesn’t like. See?”

On March 15, the pompous, censorious peer tweeted that he had written to UK media regulator Ofcom, requesting that they consider “withdrawing licence from Putin’s propaganda arm Russia Today” – which according to him is “not a news channel.”

Perhaps we should move to a system whereby Lord Adonis designates what is or is not a “news channel”? We can’t leave it to ordinary viewers in Sunderland or Southampton to decide, can we?

Then there are the recent comments of Peter Tatchell. The ‘rights activist’ is another ‘liberal’ who is currently advocating some pretty illiberal measures. On Sunday, on Twitter, he called for the ‘seizure’ of the UK assets of Putin-linked officials and their families and for their children to be expelled from British schools. Got that? Children expelled from school not because they are unruly or have been taking drugs, but because of who their mums and dads are. The parallels with Nazi Germany circa 1935 spring readily to mind.

The sad truth is that hatred of Russia and Russians has not only become an acceptable form of racism in the ‘politically correct’ Britain of 2018, it’s almost de rigueur for anyone who wants to progress in politics and the media. What an indictment that is of the present system. The more we talk of 'tolerance,' the less 'tolerant' our public life has become.

The phenomenon of liberal totalitarianism – and I don’t think it's hyperbolic to call it that – needs to be openly discussed, before it’s too late. It’s already too late for some. Entire countries such as Libya – which not so long ago enjoyed the highest standard of living in the whole of Africa – have been destroyed in order to ‘save’  their people from a leader the ‘liberals’ deem is beyond the pale. Whether the people want to be saved is neither here nor there. The Western ‘liberal’ always knows best. He’s superior to everyone else. He has the right to decide who should lead countries thousands of miles away, which elections are ‘free and fair’ and which ones are fixed. Liberalism used to be an ideology which protected the individual and his rights. Now that it has merged with neo-conservatism, it oppresses the individual and reduces our rights. It seeks to ban, to bomb, to destroy. And all done in the name of ‘moderation’ and ‘fighting extremism.’

Old-style liberalism took its cue from John Stuart Mill, the author of ‘On Liberty,’ who warned of the dangers of suppressing opinions we don’t like. “If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind,” Mill famously wrote.

New-style liberalism by contrast takes its cue from neocon ideologues and obsessive Cold War warriors who want to clamp down on dissident voices.

An important turning point in the descent of liberalism into totalitarianism was the ‘humanitarian’ bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and in particular the targeting by NATO of Serbian TV. Sixteen workers were killed in a missile strike in the early hours of April 23, which also severely damaged a nearby Russian Orthodox Church. It was hailed by the truly demonic US envoy Richard Holbrooke as a “positive development.”

NATO justified the attack on the grounds that RTS was broadcasting anti-NATO ‘propaganda.’ British Prime Minister Tony Blair declared that bombing television stations was “entirely justified.”

It’s worth remembering that even the Luftwaffe, at the height of the Blitz, didn’t bomb the BBC having demanded that it hand the microphone to Joseph Goebbels.

The way we can strike back against this new liberal totalitarianism is to refuse to be cowed by it. We must not be afraid to express views which we genuinely hold, even if it does mean being targeted by witch-finders or NATO ‘democracy bombs.’ The more we speak our minds, the more it will encourage others to speak out too. Anti-free speech bullies who are destroying the Enlightenment values they claim to support, can only succeed if they ‘gaslight’ us into submission and people decide to bite their tongues. That way – the cowardly way – leads to a thousand deaths, as Shakespeare put it; the valiant by contrast, taste death only once.

Question More, as the RT the motto says. And don’t let those who want us to question less get away with it.

Follow Neil Clark on Twitter @NeilClark66


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I was listening to the radio news this morning in the UK and caught a bit of the bbc last night, it's wall to wall coverage of this:

Britain to seek EU condemnation of Russia over nerve agent attack

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-russia-eu/britain-to-seek-eu-condemnation-of-russia-over-nerve-agent-attack-idUSKBN1GX3C9

“Russia has shown itself as a strategic enemy, not a strategic partner,” a senior British official told Reuters, who stressed however that Britain was not seeking new economic sanctions on Russia.

EU summit: Theresa May's Russia mission faces Brexit test

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43498310

Yes, you read that right, top of Theresa May's list at the EU summit won't be giving the long-running talks a shove forward.

The deal over the transition period - the buffer zone between Brexit and the ending of all ties - only needs to be rubber stamped on Friday.

Of course, there are many more tangles to be sorted in the coming months. But tonight, the prime minister's main goal is to try to stiffen up the EU's response to the threat from Russia.

Nayirah testimony

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

The Nayirah testimony was a false testimony given before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990, by a 15-year-old girl who provided only her first name, Nayirah. The testimony was widely publicized, and was cited numerous times by United States senators and President George H. W. Bush in their rationale to back Kuwait in the Gulf War. In 1992, it was revealed that Nayirah's last name was al-Ṣabaḥ (Arabic: نيره الصباح‎) and that she was the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. Furthermore, it was revealed that her testimony was organized as part of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait public relations campaign which was run by an American public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for the Kuwaiti government. Following this, al-Sabah's testimony has come to be regarded as a classic example of modern atrocity propaganda.[1][2]

In her emotional testimony, Nayirah stated that after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, take the incubators, and leave the babies to die.

Her story was initially corroborated by Amnesty International[3] and testimony from evacuees. Following the liberation of Kuwait, reporters were given access to the country. An ABC report found that "patients, including premature babies, did die, when many of Kuwait's nurses and doctors... fled" but Iraqi troops "almost certainly had not stolen hospital incubators and left hundreds of Kuwaiti babies to die."[4][5] Amnesty International reacted by issuing a correction, with executive director John Healey subsequently accusing the Bush administration of "opportunistic manipulation of the international human rights movement".[6]

But what is the motivation? I can understand Russia sending a message to potential traitors (the official story) but I can't figure out why some other state actor, especially the UK, would want to do this thing.

Figured it out yet ?


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One of the commenters at the the Saker's site left this link, it's well worth the read:

No Spirit Of Liberty – The Salisbury Case, Corbyn And The Need For Dissent

http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2018/865-no-spirit-of-liberty-the-salisbury-case-corbyn-and-the-need-for-dissent.html

Fifteen years ago this month, the US-led 'Shock and Awe' offensive began against Iraq, supposedly to disarm the country of its 'weapons of mass destruction'. The illegal invasion and subsequent brutal occupation led to the loss of around one million lives, created millions of refugees, destroyed the infrastructure of a country already ravaged by over a decade of cruel UN sanctions, and contributed significantly to the rise of Islamic State. All of this might never have happened were it not for an intense campaign of propaganda and deception in which the so-called 'mainstream' media, including 'impartial' BBC News, were enthusiastic participants.


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The 5 Principles of Ethical Journalism

https://ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/who-we-are/5-principles-of-journalism

The core principles of ethical journalism set out below provide an excellent base for everyone who aspires to launch themselves into the public information sphere to show responsibility in how they use information.

There are hundreds of codes of conduct, charters and statements made by media and professional groups outlining the principles, values and obligations of the craft of journalism.

Most focus on five common themes:

1. Truth and Accuracy
Journalists cannot always guarantee ‘truth’, but getting the facts right is the cardinal principle of journalism. We should always strive for accuracy, give all the relevant facts we have and ensure that they have been checked. When we cannot corroborate information we should say so.

2. Independence
Journalists must be independent voices; we should not act, formally or informally, on behalf of special interests whether political, corporate or cultural. We should declare to our editors – or the audience – any of our political affiliations, financial arrangements or other personal information that might constitute a conflict of interest.

3. Fairness and Impartiality
Most stories have at least two sides. While there is no obligation to present every side in every piece, stories should be balanced and add context. Objectivity is not always possible, and may not always be desirable (in the face for example of brutality or inhumanity), but impartial reporting builds trust and confidence.

4. Humanity
Journalists should do no harm. What we publish or broadcast may be hurtful, but we should be aware of the impact of our words and images on the lives of others.

5. Accountability
A sure sign of professionalism and responsible journalism is the ability to hold ourselves accountable. When we commit errors we must correct them and our expressions of regret must be sincere not cynical. We listen to the concerns of our audience. We may not change what readers write or say but we will always provide remedies when we are unfair.


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Assassination in Africa: Inside the plots to kill Rwanda’s dissidents

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/secret-recording-says-former-rwandan-army-major-proves-government-hires-assassins-to-kill-critics-abroad/article18396349/

RWANDA'S HUNTED

Much of the world regards President Paul Kagame as a hero. But 20 years after he helped to stop his country’s brutal genocide, there are mounting allegations that he is silencing dissenters with violence.

A months-long, international inquiry by The Globe’s Geoffrey York and contributor Judi Rever has uncovered explosive testimonies from those who say they were recruited for assassinations – including an alleged recording of one job offer

‘The price is not a problem,” says the man on the phone. "We will show our appreciation if things are beautifully done. They will be rewarded."

The tone of this offer, calm and confident, is so casual it could be about bringing on workers for a plumbing job. What is actually under discussion: $1-million for the hiring of contract killers to assassinate two of Rwandan President Paul Kagame's most hated enemies.

It is 2011, and the speaker is Colonel Dan Munyuza, Rwanda's director of military intelligence and a trusted ally of the Rwandan president. The man on the other end of the line is Robert Higiro, a former Rwandan army major living in exile.

But Mr. Higiro said he had no intention of hiring killers. He had been tapped for the assassinations months before, and informed the targets. They told him to play along with Col. Munyuza - and to tape the explosive conversations.

When one of the two targets was brutally killed on Dec. 31, and gunmen tried to kill the second, Mr. Higiro agreed to share those recordings with The Globe and Mail. Three independent sources - former army colleagues who also know Col. Munyuza personally - confirmed that the voice on tape is his. Two independent translators worked on transcribing the phone recordings from the original Kinyarwanda language.

The phone recordings are part of a months-long investigation by The Globe into murder plots organized by the Rwandan government. Rwandan exiles in both South Africa and Belgium - speaking in clandestine meetings in secure locations because of their fears of attack - gave detailed accounts of being recruited to assassinate critics of President Kagame.

Their evidence is the strongest yet to support what human rights groups and Rwandan exiles have suspected for years about the Rwandan government's involvement in attacks or planned attacks on dissidents, not only in South Africa but in Britain, Sweden, Belgium, Uganda, Kenya and Mozambique.

It also raises new questions about the world's moral stand on Rwanda. This year, the country marks the 20th anniversary of a shocking genocide. Because he helped stop the genocide, Mr. Kagame is hailed as a hero and his reborn country is touted as a model for African development - stable, business-oriented, fast-growing, environmentally clean and virtually free of pettty corruption. But as revelations of murder plots and assassinations mount, easy narratives of good overcoming evil become more and more difficult to sustain. The reality in Rwanda is far more complex. The mass killings of the 1990s and the recent assassination plots left almost no one untainted.

Meanwhile, Mr. Kagame's enemies live in fear - or in hiding - after a wave of attacks against them.

And they are the lucky ones: On New Year's Eve, one of the Mr. Kagame's most-wanted, Rwandan dissident Patrick Karegeya, was brutally strangled to death in a Johannesburg hotel room. His killer or killers remain at large.


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Russia condemns Theresa May's 'circus show' over poison spy attack probe

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/930724/russia-theresa-may-circus-show-poison-spy-salisbury-attack

Mrs May said: "There are only two plausible explanations for what happened in Salisbury on March 4.

"Either this was a direct action by the Russian state against our country, or the Russian government lost control of its potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others."

[So, what was the Prime Minister up to with her two 'plausible explanations' ?]

Framing effect (psychology)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_effect_(psychology)

The framing effect is an example of cognitive bias, in which people react to a particular choice in different ways depending on how it is presented; e.g. as a loss or as a gain.[1] People tend to avoid risk when a positive frame is presented but seek risks when a negative frame is presented.[2] Gain and loss are defined in the scenario as descriptions of outcomes (e.g., lives lost or saved, disease patients treated and not treated, lives saved and lost during accidents, etc.).

Prospect theory shows that a loss is more significant than the equivalent gain,[2] that a sure gain (certainty effect and pseudocertainty effect) is favored over a probabilistic gain,[3] and that a probabilistic loss is preferred to a definite loss.[2] One of the dangers of framing effects is that people are often provided with options within the context of only one of the two frames.[4]

The concept helps to develop an understanding of frame analysis within social movements, and also in the formation of political opinion where spin plays a large role in political opinion polls that are framed to encourage a response beneficial to the organization that has commissioned the poll. It has been suggested that the use of the technique is discrediting political polls themselves.[5] The effect is reduced, or even eliminated, if ample credible information is provided to people.[5]

MAY TOLD UK ‘ONLY TWO NOVICHOK ALTERNATIVES’. WHAT’S HER/BBC’S EXCUSE FOR IGNORING THIS, THEN?

https://skwawkbox.org/2018/03/16/may-told-uk-only-two-novichok-alternatives-whats-her-bbcs-excuse-for-ignoring-this-then/

This claim – that the only realistic answer to the provenance of the nerve agent attack is the Russian state, with a minute possibility that the Russian state negligently lost some ‘Novichok’ – has been treated as fact by the mainstream media, including the BBC News channel, as well as, to their shame, by Labour ‘moderates’.

None of them have any excuse.

A simple search for relevant keywords will immediately turn up the fact that – according to the BBC among other sources – there was another country that held major stocks of nerve agents.

Including ‘novichoks’.

Uzbekistan was a part of the Soviet Union until 1991, when it declared its independence. Eight years later, the BBC and other outlets reported that US experts were in Uzbekistan to help destroy its stocks of nerve-agents, especially novichoks – because Uzbekistan had been a major testing centre for the chemical weapons:

[The Russians are now framing the situation using two possible explanations, but crucially.. they_have_employed_logic!]

Moscow: UK is Either Unable to Protect From Attack or Staged Skripal Attack

https://sputniknews.com/russia/201803211062757577-russia-skripal-poisoning-meeting/

The Russian Foreign Ministry and Russian Defense Ministry have jointly delivered a statement after a meeting with foreign envoys amid the scandal surrounding the poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal.

According to Vladimir Ermakov, head of the non-proliferation and arms control department at the Russian Defense Ministry, "either the British authorities are unable to protect from a terrorist attack on their territory or staged the attack themselves."

[The rest of the world that is not either thick, or morally corrupt, knows this too.. which is why the EU are not willing to commit to this obviously staged false flag]

‘No smoking gun’: Smack in the face for May as EU fails to back British escalation over Skripal

https://www.rt.com/uk/422029-skripal-allies-gun-escalation-salisbury/

The UK was quick to point the blame for the Salisbury attack – but its own allies are refusing to do the same. Reports suggest EU leaders gathering in Brussels are backing away from British attempts to condemn Moscow.
After former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were exposed to the A-234 nerve agent (also known as ‘Novichok’) in Salisbury, UK Prime Minister Theresa May blamed Russia. Britain said it was “highly likely” to be a Kremlin-backed act of aggression, despite repeated denials from Moscow.

READ MORE: Accusations and threats, but where are the facts? – Russia challenges West on truth

A draft text from EU talks on the matter has emerged condemning “in the strongest possible terms” the attacks. The phrase was added to the draft text that EU leaders will discuss at a summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, which was obtained by Politico.

However, the question of attribution was not changed. The UK has been pushing for the Kremlin to be recognized as the perpetrator. Yet, its allies in Brussels appear to be refusing to cast judgment ahead of the evidence, unlike Downing Street.

The text says: “The EU takes extremely seriously the UK Government’s assessment that it is highly likely that the Russian Federation is responsible. The European Union is shocked at the offensive use of any military-grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia, for the first time on European soil in over 70 years. The use of chemical weapons by anyone under any circumstances is completely unacceptable and constitutes a security threat to us all. The Union calls on Russia to address urgently the questions raised by the UK and the international community and provide immediate, full and complete disclosure of its Novichok programme to the OPCW.”

Diplomats familiar with talks said Greece and Italy did not want the language changed. “They say that there’s no smoking gun, or at least not yet,” said an EU diplomat to Politico. Greece has denied calling for alterations but admitted it lobbied for a more “clear” text.

Theresa May’s team has been hoping for unequivocal world backing, but has not received it. She expelled 23 Russian diplomats from London last week, and has threatened further punishment.

The UK said it was not a snub by Brussels that the language is cooler than last week, especially that used by Germany and France, but said getting 27 countries to agree is difficult. It is especially damaging for Theresa May after President Putin was praised by Trump in a call after his re-election on Sunday, despite her hopes the special friendship between the UK and the US would see Trump backing her fully.


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Moon of Alabama's latest information:

Russian Scientists Explain 'Novichok' - High Time For Britain To Come Clean (Updated)

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/03/russian-scientists-explain-novichok-high-time-for-britain-to-come-clean.html#more

A week ago we asked if 'Novichok' poisons are real. The answer is now in: It is 'yes' and 'no'. Several Russian scientist now say that they once researched and developed lethal poisons but they assert that other countries can and have copied these. 'Novichok', they say,  is a just western propaganda invention. They see the British accusations as a cynical plot against Russia. The people who push the 'Novichok' accusations have political and commercial interests.

The British Prime Minister Theresa May insinuated that the British-Russian double agent Sergej Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who collapsed on March 4 on a public bench in Salisbury, were affected by a 'Russian' nerve agent:

"It is now clear that Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia. It is part of a group of nerve agents known as Novichok."

Theresa May's claims are highly questionable.

A new article in the New Scientists confirms the claims by the Russian scientists that the 'Novichok' agents which may have affected the Skripals may have been produced elsewhere:

Weapons experts have told New Scientist that a number of countries legally created small amounts of Novichok after it was revealed in 1992 and a production method was later published.
In 2016 Iranian scientists, in cooperation with the OPCW, published production and detection methods for such agents. It is likely that the various government labs secretly re-developed and produced these chemicals for their own purposes even prior to the Iranian publication.

[UPDATE] In an interview with Deutsche Welle British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson admits that Porton Down had (illegal?)  'Novichok' agents when the incident in Salisbury happened:

DW: You argue that the source of this nerve agent, Novichok, is Russia. How did you manage to find it out so quickly? Does Britain possess samples of it?

Boris Johnson: Let me be clear with you … When I look at the evidence, I mean the people from Porton Down, the laboratory …

DW: So they have the samples …

Boris Johnson: They do. And they were absolutely categorical and I asked the guy myself, I said, "Are you sure?" And he said there's no doubt.


But Porton Down did not agree with the British government to claim that the supposed nerve agent was "made by Russia." It only agreed to the compromise formulation "of a type developed by Russia" i.e. it could have been made anywhere. [End Update]

The claims by the British government that a. the Skripals were affected by a nerve agent and that b. Russia was involved in the Skripal incident because it has some exclusive access to these agents seem both baseless. Unless there is significant further evidence the British incrimination of Russia looks like a cynical plot invented for political and/or commercial purposes.

As usual in the military-industrial complex the people who push such scares, are the ones who profit from them.


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Well that all flipped quickly! A charade of solidarity without an investigation, evidence presented or due process.

Read the comments.. nobody believes them:

EU recalls Russia envoy, backs UK belief Moscow ‘highly likely’ responsible for Skripal poisoning

https://www.rt.com/news/422087-eu-recalls-russia-envoy-skripal/

EU leaders see “no plausible alternative explanation” for the Skripal poisoning and are set to recall their ambassador to Russia for consultations, pressured by the UK to hold the Kremlin responsible for it without due process.

Following talks on Thursday, the leaders of 28 European nations agreed with the British assessment that it was “highly likely” that Russia was behind this month's poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. The European Council “agrees with the United Kingdom government’s assessment that it is highly likely that the Russian Federation is responsible and that there is no plausible alternative explanation,” the member states said in a joint statement.

While the EU Council insisted that member states “will coordinate on the consequences to be drawn in the light of the answers provided by the Russian authorities,” the bloc made a decision to recall its ambassador from Moscow. The EU envoy “is being recalled for consultations to Brussels,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said, noting that the “measure” was not a “sanction,” and that the ambassador was not being withdrawn from his post in Moscow.

Theresa May arrived in Brussels on Thursday, armed to the teeth with anti-Russian rhetoric and loud warnings that Moscow remains a threat to Europe. Without presenting a single shred of evidence of the Kremlin’s involvement in the nerve agent attack in Salisbury, she led her colleagues to form an anti-Russian chorus at the summit.

“Some member states are looking into possibly expelling Russian diplomats or recalling national diplomats,” Dutch PM Rutte added, according to AFP.

After expelling 23 Russian diplomats and their families from the UK earlier this month, May reportedly made other leaders contemplate similar measures. “A couple of countries spoke about their readiness” to follow up today’s statement with some expulsions, Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipilä was quoted by Bloomberg as having said. Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said she was ready to expel Russian spies, Reuters reports, after May proposed going after Russian intelligence networks.

As the EU Council deliberated, Russia’s ambassador to Britain, Alexander Yakovenko, warned that the UK has “bad record of violating international law and misleading the international community.”

“History shows that British statements must be verified,” he added, urging a “full transparency of the investigation” as well as cooperation with Moscow and the experts of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Earlier this week, OPCW agents arrived in Britain to begin their probe into the March 4 poisoning, after Russia insisted that an independent investigation be conducted by the chemical weapons body, which is based in The Hague. On Tuesday, OPCW Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu said that it will take “another two to three weeks to finalize the analysis.”

Amid Britain’s premature conclusions that there “is no plausible alternative explanation” that the Skripals were poisoned by the nerve agent on none-other than the Russian government’s orders, Moscow has repeatedly requested the UK Foreign Office to tone down its hasty speculations and launch a joint investigation into the case. On Thursday, President Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov once again told RT that Skripal held zero value for Moscow, ever since the spy swap back in 2010, and that a search for a possible beneficiary and a motive for his poisoning, just ahead of Russian presidential elections and the FIFA World Cup, should be directed elsewhere.


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Iraq Dossier

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Dossier

Iraq – Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation[1] (more commonly known as the Iraq Dossier, the February Dossier[2] or the Dodgy Dossier) was a 2003 briefing document for the British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party government. It was issued to journalists on 3 February 2003 by Alastair Campbell, Blair's Director of Communications and Strategy, and concerned Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Together with the earlier September Dossier, these documents were ultimately used by the government to justify its involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Dossier

The term Dodgy Dossier was first coined by online polemical magazine Spiked in relation to the September Dossier.[3] The term was later employed by Channel 4 News when its reporter, Julian Rush,[4][5] was made aware of Glen Rangwala's discovery[6] that much of the work in the Iraq Dossier had been plagiarised from various unattributed sources. The most notable source was an article by then graduate student Ibrahim al-Marashi, entitled Iraq's Security and Intelligence Network: A Guide and Analysis.[7]

Whole sections of Marashi's writings on "Saddam's Special Security Organisation" were repeated verbatim including typographical errors, while certain amendments were made to strengthen the tone of the alleged findings (e.g., "monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq" became "spying on foreign embassies in Iraq", and "aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes" became "supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes").

In its opening paragraph the briefing document claimed that it drew "upon a number of sources, including intelligence material." Before the document's release it had been praised by Tony Blair and United States Secretary of State Colin Powell as further intelligence and quality research.[8] The day after Channel 4's exposé, Blair's office issued a statement admitting that a mistake was made in not crediting its sources, but did not concede that the quality of the document's content was affected.

The claims contained in the September and 'Iraq' Dossiers were called into question when weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were not found in Iraq, and the dossiers were encompassed by House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry. The Committee subsequently reported that the sources should have been credited, and that the dossier should have been checked by ministers before being released. The dossier had only been reviewed by a group of civil servants operating under Alastair Campbell. The committee stated that the publication was "almost wholly counter-productive" and in the event only served to undermine the credibility of the government's case.

The controversy over the Iraq Dossier was mentioned frequently in the government's conflict with the BBC over the claim in the September Dossier that Iraq could deploy biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so, and the controversy surrounding the death of Dr. David Kelly. Andrew Gilligan, the BBC journalist who wrote a report which claimed that the September Dossier had been deliberately exaggerated, stated before the Hutton Inquiry that recalling the February Dossier had led him to file his report based on his interview with Dr. Kelly without seeking confirmation from other sources. Whether or not the September Dossier was inconsistent with the original intelligence, it was altered in ways that made it inconsistent with itself.[9]

The dossier became a point of amusement in British politics. In a Questions to the Prime Minister conflict, Michael Howard (then leader of Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition), informed Blair, "I have got a great big dossier on his past and I haven't even had to sex it up."[10] The term "Dodgy Dossier" was used again in January 2017, in reference to the "Steele Dossier" on a supposed sex scandal involving Donald Trump.[11][12]

Iraq dossier drawn up to make case for war – intelligence officer

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/12/iraq-dossier-case-for-war

Newly released evidence to Chilcot inquiry directly contradicts Blair government's claims about dossier

A top military intelligence official has said the discredited dossier on Iraq's weapons programme was drawn up "to make the case for war", flatly contradicting persistent claims to the contrary by the Blair government, and in particular by Alastair Campbell, the former prime minister's chief spin doctor.

In hitherto secret evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Major General Michael Laurie said: "We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care."

His evidence is devastating, as it is the first time such a senior intelligence officer has directly contradicted the then government's claims about the dossier – and, perhaps more significantly, what Tony Blair and Campbell said when it was released seven months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Laurie, who was director general in the Defence Intelligence Staff, responsible for commanding and delivering raw and analysed intelligence, said: "I am writing to comment on the position taken by Alastair Campbell during his evidence to you … when he stated that the purpose of the dossier was not to make a case for war; I and those involved in its production saw it exactly as that, and that was the direction we were given."

He continued: "Alastair Campbell said to the inquiry that the purpose of the dossier was not 'to make a case for war'. I had no doubt at that time this was exactly its purpose and these very words were used."

Laurie said he recalled that the chief of defence intelligence, Air Marshal Sir Joe French, was "frequently inquiring whether we were missing something" and was under pressure. "We could find no evidence of planes, missiles or equipment that related to WMD [weapons of mass destruction], generally concluding that they must have been dismantled, buried or taken abroad. There has probably never been a greater detailed scrutiny of every piece of ground in any country."

The document is one of a number released by the Chilcot inquiry. They include top secret MI6 reports warning of the damage to British interests and the likelihood of terrorist attacks in the UK if it joined the US-led invasion of Iraq.

However, a newly declassified document reveals that Sir Kevin Tebbit, then a top official at the Ministry of Defence, warned the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, in January 2003 that the US would "feel betrayed by their partner of choice" if Britain did not go along with the invasion.

Despite its concerns, MI6 told ministers before the invasion that toppling Saddam Hussein "remains a prize because it could give new security to oil supplies".

Laurie's memo raises questions about the role of Sir John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, who later became head of MI6.

Tony Blair: 'with you, whatever' pledge was not commitment to war

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/07/tony-blair-with-you-whatever-pledge-was-not-commitment-to-war

Former PM is defiant in half-hour BBC interview after critical Chilcot report

Tony Blair has insisted that a secret 2002 pledge, revealed in the Chilcot report, to stand by George Bush “whatever” over Iraq was not an irrevocable commitment to war.

Sir John Chilcot’s critical report on Iraq revealed that Blair wrote to George W Bush eight months before the invasion to offer his apparently unqualified backing for war well before UN weapons inspectors had completed their work, saying: “I will be with you, whatever.”

In a 33-minute interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Blair remained as defiant about his decision to back the US invasion of Iraq as he had been in a two-hour press conference on Wednesday.

“I don’t think this struggle was in vain,” he said, but claimed some critics would not accept his regret about mistakes over Iraq until he said the decision itself was wrong.

He said that in the “whatever” memo he was trying to signal to Bush the UK would be his “partner of choice” but it also went on to warn against a hasty decision to invade.

Blair pointed out that the next word in the memo after “whatever” was “but”, and that it argued for going back to the UN for approval for military action. He said: “What I meant was: ‘I’m right alongside you in dealing with this, but let’s do it the right way, and it has to be done through the United Nations.’”

Blair added: “I wanted to make sure that America did not feel alone, that it did not feel compelled to go it alone. I wanted to build as big a coalition as possible. And frankly I did want the UK to be their partner of choice, to be the first telephone call they made on these issues.

“It is true that I took a decision, and I stand by that decision, that we should be right alongside America in dealing with these decisions post-9/11 and that included the issue of Iraq. But it isn’t correct to say we had made some irrevocable commitment to war.

In hitherto secret evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Major General Michael Laurie said: "We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care."

[That is not what Major General Michael Laurie said, is it Mr Blair!]


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A truly historical month for the future of our planet

http://thesaker.is/a-truly-historical-month-for-the-future-of-our-planet/

March 2018 will go down in history as a truly historical month

March 1st, Vladimir Putin makes his historical address to the Russian Federal Assembly.
March 4th, Sergei Skripal, a former UK spy, is allegedly poisoned in the UK.
March 8th, British officials accuse Russia of using nerve gas to attempt to murder Sergei Skripal.
March 12th, Theresa May officially blames Russia for the poisoning and gives Russia a 24-hour ultimatum to justify herself; the Russians ignore that ultimatum. The same day, the US representative at the UNSC threatens to attack Syria even without a UNSC authorization.
March 13th, Chief of Russia’s General Staff Valery Gerasimov warned that “in case there is a threat to the lives of our military, the Russian Armed Force will take retaliatory measures both over the missiles and carriers that will use them”. The same day Chief of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff, Deputy Defense Minister, General of the Army Valery Gerasimov had a phone conversation with Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the United States’ Joint Chiefs of Staff.
March 15th, the UK blocked Russia’s draft UN Security Council statement on Skripal poisoning case asking for an “urgent and civilized investigation” into the Skripal case. The US, UK, France, and Germany issue a statement backing the UK and blaming Russia. The UK Defence Minister tells Russia to “shut up and go away”.
March 16th, Major General Igor Konashenkov calls the British Defense Minister an “uncouth shrew” and “intellectual impotent”.
March 17th, Russian Generals warned that the US is preparing a chemical false flag attack in Syria
March 18th, Putin overwhelmingly wins the Presidential election. The same day, General Votel, Commander of CENTCOM declares in a testimony to the Armed Services Committee that differences with Russia should be settled “through political and diplomatic channels”. When asked whether it would be correct to say that “with Russia and Iran’s help, Assad has won the Civil War in Syria?” General Votel replied “I do not think that is too — that is too strong of a statement. I think they have provided him the wherewithal to — to be ascendant at this point”.
March 19th, the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council issues a statement fully backing the UK.
March 21st The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs summons all ambassadors to a briefing on the Skripal case. The language used by the Russian representative at this briefing possibly is the bluntest used by any Russian (or even Soviet) official towards the West since WWII. The French, Swedish and US representative at the meeting all stood up to declare their “solidarity” with the UK.
March 22nd, The Chief of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff, Deputy Defense Minister, General of the Army Valery Gerasimov had another phone conversation with Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the United States’ Joint Chiefs of Staff.  The same day, General Gerasimov also held another conversation by phone with the Commander of US European Command and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Army General Curtis Scaparrotti.

So what is really going on here? Surely nobody seriously believes that the Brits really think that the Russians had any motive to try to kill Skripal or, for that matter, if they had a motive, that they would do it in such a stupid manner? And what’s the deal with Syria anyway? Is the USA going to execute their false flag and bomb?

I think that at this point we should not get bogged down in the details of all this. There is a forest behind these trees. What matters most now, is that the most powerful factions of the AngloZionist Empire’s ruling elites are making a concerted effort to create a unified anti-Russian coalition. In this regard it is quite telling that the US, France, and Germany issued a statement on March 15th without even bothering to consult with their so-called “allies” in NATO or the EU. You can immediately tell “who is boss” in those crisis situations when the rest of the Euro-riffraff simply doesn’t matter (poor East Europeans with their delusions about being appreciated or even respected by the West!). Furthermore, it is quite clear that in this case, the “Anglo” component of the AngloZionist Empire is far more involved than the Zionist one, at least insofar as the front of the stage is concerned (behind the scenes the Neocons are seething at Trump for calling Putin to congratulate him and offer negotiations). I think that a number of crucial developments forced the US and the UK into trying to strong-arm the rest of the western nations to “circle the wagons” around the Empire:

1. The US humiliatingly failed in its attempts to frighten and force the DPRK into submission
2. The AngloZionists have lost the civil war in Syria
3. The UK and the rest of the NATO are becoming militarily irrelevant
4. The Ukraine has crashed and is burning and a Ukronazi attack on the Donbass is most likely
5. The political forces in Europe who opposed anti-Russian policies are on the ascent
6. The Russians are winning many EU countries over by economic means including North Stream whereas sanctions are hurting the EU much more than Russia
7. The anti-Putin campaign has miserably failed and Russia is fully united in her stance against the Empire

What this all means is very simple: the Empire needs to either fold or double down and folding is just not something the imperial elites are willing to consider yet. They are therefore using the tools which they perceive as most effective:

False flags: this is really a time-honored western tradition used by pretty much all the western powers. Since the general public is brainwashed and mostly can’t even begin to imagine that “freedom loving liberal democracies” could use methods usually ascribed to evil, bloodthirsty dictatorial regimes, false flags are an ideal way to get the public opinion in the correct state of mind to approve of aggressive, hostile and even violent policies against a perceived threat or obstacle to hegemony.

Soft power: have you noticed how the Oscars or the Cannes festival always pick exactly the kind of “artists” which the Empire happens to politically promote? Well, this is true not only for the Oscars or the Cannes festival but for almost all of the cultural, social and political life in the West. This is especially true of so-called “human rights” and “peace” organizations which are simply political pit-bulls which can be sicked on any country in need of subversion and/or intervention. Russia has never developed that kind of political toolkit.

Verbal escalation: this tactic is extremely crude yet very effective. You begin by vociferously proclaiming some falsehood. The fact that you proclaimed it in such vociferous and hyperbolic matter achieves two immediate results: it sends all your friends and allies a clear message “you are either with us or against us”, that leaves no room for nuance or analysis, and it gives otherwise rather spineless politicians no way to back down, thus strengthening their “resolve”.

Herding: there is safety in numbers. So when dealing with a potentially dangerous foe, like Russia, all the little guys flock together so as to appear bigger or, at least, harder to single out. Also, when everybody is responsible, nobody is. Thus herding is also politically expedient. Finally, it changed the inter-relational dynamic from one of friends or allies to one typically found among accomplices in a crime.

Direct threats: the Empire got away with making threats left and right for many decades, and this is a habit which is hard to break. The likes of Nikki Haley or Hillary Clinton probably sincerely believe that the USA is quasi-omnipotent or, conversely, they might be terrified by the creeping suspicion that it might not. Threats are also an easy, if ineffective, substitute for diplomacy and negotiations, especially when your position is objectively wrong and the other side is simply a lot smarter than you.

The big problem is that none of these methods work against Russia or, let me correct that, don’t work anymore (they sure appeared to work in the past). The Russian public opinion is fully aware of all these methods (courtesy of a Russian media NOT controlled by AngloZionists) and Margarita Simonian beautifully summarized the feelings that all this elicits in the Russian population:

“all your injustice and cruelty, inquisitorial hypocrisy and lies you forced us to stop respecting you. You and your so-called “values.” We don’t want to live like you live, anymore. For fifty years, secretly and openly, we wanted to live like you, but not any longer. We have no more respect for you, and for those among us that you support, and for all those people who support you (…). For that, you only have yourself to blame (…) Our people are capable to forgive a lot. But we don’t forgive arrogance, and no normal nation would. Your only remaining Empire would be wise to learn the history of its allies, all of them are former empires. To learn the ways they lost their empires. Only because of their arrogance. White man’s burden, my ass!” (this last sentence in English in the original text – trans.)

The stark truth is that far from wanting to invade, appease or otherwise please the West, Russia has absolutely no need, or even interest, in it. None. For centuries Russian elites have been western-focused to some degree or other and none of them could even begin to imagine a West-less Russia. This is still true today, the Russian “elites” still want to live like (very rich) Brits or Germans and they still hate the common Russian people and Vladimir Putin. But those Russian elites have now been crushed by the magnitude of Putin’s victory in the presidential elections. Normally, this should result in an even bigger exile of Russian “businessmen” to the UK, France or Israel, but the problem now is that the British are making noises about punishing them for, well, being Russians (even Russophobic, pro-western, “Russians”). As a result, these “poor” pro-western liberals can only whine on the social media and in the few pro-western media outlets left in Russia (no, not due to repression, but due to their political irrelevancy being backed, as they are, by something between 2% and 5% of the population).

But setting aside the wealthy “elites” for a moment, Russia as a country and as a nation has simply no use for the West and what it represents. Those who fantasize about Russia being interested in “Europe”, “White identity” or “Western Christianity” are only kidding themselves. They hope that the current cultural and spiritual revival in Russia will somehow spill over to them and allow them to extricate themselves from the gutter in which they are currently prostrated. It won’t. Just read again what Simonian said about the western “values” in the quote above. For most Russians “Europe” reeks of Napoleon, “White identity” of Hitler and “Western Christianity” of the creation of the Ukraine and the “Eastern Crusades“. No, Russia has no interest in revenge against any of that, she just has no respect or interest for what these concepts stand for. (Poland – is possibly the last country where all these things are taken seriously and fondly remembered). Still, the Russians are still willing to negotiate to establish a viable coexistence between the Western and Russian civilizational realms. Putin clearly said so in his speech

There is no need to create more threats to the world. Instead, let us sit down at the negotiating table and devise together a new and relevant system of international security and sustainable development for human civilization. We have been saying this all along. All these proposals are still valid. Russia is ready for this.

But if the AngloZionists are dead set on world domination by means of war, then Russia is ready for that too. Not a war of aggression, of course, not even against the tiny Baltic statelets, Putin made that clear too when he said “we are not threatening anyone, not going to attack anyone or take away anything from anyone with the threat of weapons. We do not need anything. Just the opposite” (emphasis added). But if attacked, Russia is now ready to defend herself:

“And to those who in the past 15 years have tried to accelerate an arms race and seek unilateral advantage against Russia, have introduced restrictions and sanctions that are illegal from the standpoint of international law aiming to restrain our nation’s development, including in the military area, I will say this: everything you have tried to prevent through such a policy has already happened. No one has managed to restrain Russia (…) Any use of nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies, weapons of short, medium or any range at all, will be considered as a nuclear attack on this country. Retaliation will be immediate, with all the attendant consequences. There should be no doubt about this whatsoever.”

Why is the nuclear issue so central? Because the Russians are fully aware of the fact that the AngloZionists cannot win a conventional war with Russia. Thus it is crucial for the Russians to convince the AngloZionists that they are neither militarily superior nor invulnerable (see here for a full analysis of these two myths). But once some kind of modus vivendi is achieved with the West, Russia will focus her efforts in different directions: much needed internal reforms and development, the work with China on the establishment of a single Eurasian zone of economic security, peace and prosperity, the restoration of peace in the Middle-East, the development of the Russian Far East and North – you name it. Russia has plenty of work which needs to be done, none of which involves the West in any capacity.

And that is, of course, what is so totally unacceptable to the West.

Hence this month’s historical developments which have placed Russia and the West in a direct collision course. As I said above, the Empire can now either fold or double down. If it decides to fold, war will be averted and meaningful negotiations finally entered into. If it doubles down, something the Neocons always do, then this means war with Russia. This is a stark and very difficult choice (no, not for normal people, but for the psychopaths ruling the West). And there isn’t much Russia could, or should, do at this point. As is the case every time a serious crisis takes place, the apparently united elites running the West will now break-up into separate factions and each one of these factions will pursue and promote its own, narrow, interests. There will be an intense, mostly behind the scenes, struggle between those who will want to double down or even trigger a war against Russia and those who will be horrified by that notion (not necessarily for profound moral reasons, just out of basic self-interest and a healthy instinct for self-preservation).

As to who will prevail, your guess is as good a mine. But the fact that today Trump replaced McMaster with a warmongering psychopath like John Bolton is a clear sign that the Neocons are in charge in the USA and that the Axis of Kindness is about to get a heck of a lot “kinder”.

The Saker


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A curious incident PART III

http://thesaker.is/a-curious-incident-part-iii/

A Curious Incident Part I may be found here: https://thesaker.is/a-curious-incident/

A Curious Incident Part II may be found here: https://thesaker.is/a-curious-incident-part-ii/

Analysis of the Attack on the Skripals

This article lays out a hypothesis in regard to the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. The reader is cautioned that this attack is possibly just one element in a larger series of associated events. These include everything from geostrategic chess in the Middle East, to the demands of domestic UK politics, to manipulating public opinion both before and after the US presidential election.

You could write several books on these issues and still not fully untangle and delineate all the interactions between the relevant actors.

This article confines itself to the events of March 4th, 2018 when two individuals were subject to an attack that left them incapacitated and subject to hospital care. Under the laws of the UK, the perpetrators are subject to criminal prosecution.

Criminal investigation rests on a triad of three elements: means, opportunity, and motive. These are the lenses through which the events of March 4th, 2018 are viewed.

-snip-

As described at the start, any investigation is an iterative process that proceeds based on the facts and the evidence. Readers are encouraged to challenge any assertion made and I will be review and amend the hypothesis and / attempt an explanation. The only exception is in regard to possible enhancements made to commercially available organophosphate.

Part IV will touch on the evidence for these events being part of a false flag, or similar concerted attempt by state actors.

In memory of David Christopher Kelly, CMG (14 May 1944 – 17 July 2003)


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THE BRAIN PROCESSES FACTS AND BELIEFS THE SAME WAY

http://www.newsweek.com/brain-processes-facts-and-beliefs-same-way-79125

When a committed Christian says he believes in the Second Coming of Christ, he believes it the way he believes that Michael Jordan was a basketball player. When an avowed atheist says there is no such thing as God, she knows it the way that she knows that Elvis was a rock star. According to new research—published yesterday in the online science journal PLoS One—by Sam Harris (the neuroscientist and atheist author of The End of Faith) and colleagues, "belief is belief is belief," as Harris puts it. "We seem to be doing the same thing when we accept a proposition about God or the virgin birth as we do about astronomy."

What Harris, his fellow researcher Jonas Kaplan, and the other authors of the study want to address is the idea, which has been floating around in both scientific and religious circles, that our brains are doing something special when we believe in God—that religious belief is, neurologically speaking, an entirely different process from believing in things that are empirically and verifiably true (things that Harris endearingly refers to as "tables and chairs"). He says his results "cut against the quite prevalent notion that there's something else entirely going on in the case of religious belief." Our believing brains make no qualitative distinctions between the kinds of things you learn in a math textbook and the kinds of things you learn in Sunday school. Though the existence of God will never be proved—or disproved—by an fMRI scan, science can study a thing or two about the neurological mechanisms of belief. What Harris's study shows is that when a conservative Christian says he believes in the Second Coming as an undeniable fact, he isn't lying or exaggerating or employing any other rhetorical maneuver. If a believer's brain regards the Second Coming the way it does every other fact, then debates about the veracity of faith would seem—to the committed believer, at least—to be rather pointless.

Harris, Kaplan, et al. put 30 people in fMRI machines. Half of them were committed Christian believers, the kind of Christians who would immediately agree with the statement "Jesus ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father." Half were committed atheists, the kind who would agree with the statement "The belief that Jesus ascended to heaven is clearly false." Up on a screen before them, participants would read declarative statements. Some were statements of religious belief, some of religious disbelief. Some were statements about more ordinary facts. Participants had to push buttons—indicating true or false—as the researchers watched their brains light up. Belief in God, disbelief in God, and belief in simple empirically verifiable facts all lit up the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that governs your sense of self. We are, in some sense, what we believe.

The bigger picture, from Harris's point of view, is that science urgently needs to get involved in the biggest questions of human existence—good, evil, morality, ethics, and what he calls "human well-being"—and not cede these to the religious sphere. "It is generally imagined," he wrote to me in an e-mail, "that scientific facts and human values represent distinct and incommensurable ways of speaking about the world. Consequently, most people assume that science will never be in a position to resolve ethical questions or to determine how human beings ought to live." Questions of gay marriage, the subjugation of women under the Taliban, a community's responsibility to its children: all these have been relegated to the realm of religion or "values." But, says Harris, the more we know, through science, about how people live—and how they think, and what makes them happy—the more real information we'll have about how best to live together on this planet. The fMRI experiments do not pertain to these largest questions, of course. But they do show (again) what neuroscientists already know. "Intuition" and "reason" are not two separate activities. They're interconnected. From the brain's point of view, religious belief and empirical data are the same.

As a student of the faith-versus-reason debate, I find another aspect of these experiments more provocative. Harris proves what is self-evident from observing countless faith-versus-reason debates: each side believes firmly in its own truth claims; each side believes that the other's truth claims are absurd. If Harris is saying that Christians and atheists regard their beliefs the same way they regard uncontested facts ("tables and chairs"), it's no wonder that few conceptual bridges are ever built or crossed. (He even noted, with asterisks as to its significance, what he called the "blasphemy reaction": that when atheists disagreed with a Christian belief, or when Christians affirmed one, their pleasure centers lit up—proof that the combatants in the faith-versus-reason wars really do enjoy the fight, equally.)

But for those of us who yearn for resolution, Harris's experiments offer a glimmer of hope. While the brains of believers and nonbelievers do not differentiate between beliefs about God and about mathematics, the believers themselves do, a little. Participants retrieved their religious beliefs and their historical facts from the same place and in the same way, but they showed less certainty when thinking about the religious statements. It took them a little longer to push the button, and a part of the brain having to do with uncertainty, or cognitive dissonance, lit up. If even the strongest believers are a little unsure about God, and the strongest atheists are a teeny bit anxious that they might be wrong, there's room, perhaps, for one person to begin to try to imagine the world view of another, no matter what the brain sees as true.


---------------------------
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Religion and children

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_children

Children usually acquire the religious views of their parents, although they may also be influenced by others they communicate with such as peers and teachers.[citation needed] Aspects of this subject include rites of passage, education and child psychology, as well as discussion of the moral issue of religious education of children.

Rites of passage

Most Christian churches practice infant baptism[1] to enter children into the faith. Some form of confirmation ritual occurs when the child has reached the age of reason and voluntarily accepts the religion.

Ritual circumcision is used to mark Jewish and Muslim and Coptic Christian[2] and Ethiopian Orthodox Christian[3] infant males as belonging to the faith. Jewish boys and girls then confirm their belonging at a coming of age ceremony known as the Bar and Bat Mitzvah respectively.

Education

Religious education

A parochial school (US) or faith school (UK), is a type of school which engages in religious education in addition to conventional education. Parochial schools may be primary or secondary, and may have state funding but varying amounts of control by a religious organization. In addition there are religious schools which only teach the religion and subsidiary subjects (such as the language of the holy books), typically run on a part-time basis separate from normal schooling. Examples are the Christian Sunday schools and the Jewish Hebrew schools. Islamic religious schools are known in English by the Arabic loanword Madrasah.

Prayer in school

Main article: School prayer
Religion may have an influence on what goes on in state schools. For example, in the UK the Education Act 1944 introduced the requirement for daily prayers in all state-funded schools, but later acts changed this requirement to a daily "collective act of worship", the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 being the most recent. This also requires such acts of worship to be "wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character".[4] The term "mainly" means that acts related to other faiths can be carried out providing the majority are Christian.[5]

Teaching evolution

Main article: Creation and evolution in public education
The creation-evolution controversy, especially the status of creation and evolution in public education, is a debate over teaching children the origin and evolution of life, mostly in conservative regions of the United States. However, evolution is accepted by the Catholic Church and is a part of the Catholic Catechism.[citation needed]

Display of religious symbols

See also: Laïcité
In France, children are forbidden from wearing conspicuous religious symbols in public schools.[citation needed]

Religious indoctrination of children

See also: Indoctrination, Criticism of religion § children, and Child evangelism movement § Criticism
Many legal experts have argued that the government should create laws in the interests of the welfare of children, irrespective of the religion of their parents.[6] Nicholas Humphrey has argued that children "have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people's bad ideas," and should have the ability to question the religious views of their parents.[7]

"Parents' religion and children's welfare: debunking the doctrine of parents' rights, Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer spoke of the subject in the 19th century:

"And as the capacity for believing is strongest in childhood, special care is taken to make sure of this tender age. This has much more to do with the doctrines of belief taking root than threats and reports of miracles. If, in early childhood, certain fundamental views and doctrines are paraded with unusual solemnity, and an air of the greatest earnestness never before visible in anything else; if, at the same time, the possibility of a doubt about them be completely passed over, or touched upon only to indicate that doubt is the first step to eternal perdition, the resulting impression will be so deep that, as a rule, that is, in almost every case, doubt about them will be almost as impossible as doubt about one's own existence."

— Arthur Schopenhauer, On Religion: A Dialogue
Several authors have been critical of religious indoctrination of children, such as Nicolas Humphrey,[8] Daniel Dennett[9] and Richard Dawkins.[10] Christopher Hitchens and Dawkins use the term child abuse to describe the harm that some religious upbringings inflict on children.[11][12] A. C. Grayling has argued "we are all born atheists... and it takes a certain amount of work on the part of the adults in our community to persuade [children] differently."[13]

Dawkins states that he is angered by the labels "Muslim child" or "Catholic child". He asks how a young child can be considered intellectually mature enough to have such independent views on the cosmos and humanity’s place within it. By contrast, Dawkins points out, no reasonable person would speak of a "Marxist child" or a "Tory child."[11] He suggests there is little controversy over such labeling because of the "weirdly privileged status of religion".

On several occasions Dawkins made the claim that sexually abusing a child is "arguably less" damaging than "the long term psychological damage inflicted by bringing up a child Catholic in the first place".[11]

As a means to transmit his opinions directly to children Dawkins wrote a profusely illustrated book of scientific divulgation, The Magic of Reality, in which some natural phenomena that's usually left explained to them by means of the action of gods or other mythical creatures are demystified. Each chapter book is devoted to a single natural phenomenon, such as earthquakes, always starting with a myth or folklore of world's major religions followed by an actual scientific explanation that debunks the latter.[14]

Child marriage

Main article: Child marriage
Islam[15] has permitted the child marriage of older men to girls as young as 10 years of age if they have entered puberty. The Seyaj Organization for the Protection of Children describes cases of a 10-year-old girl being married and raped in Yemen (Nujood Ali),[16] a 13-year-old Yemeni girl dying of internal bleeding three days after marriage,[17][18] and a 12-year-old girl dying in childbirth after marriage.[15][19]

Latter Day Saint church founder Joseph Smith married girls as young as 13 and 14,[20] and other Latter Day Saints married girls as young as 10.[21] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints eliminated underaged marriages in the 19th century, but several fundamentalist branches of Mormonism continue the practice.[22]

Health effects

A study of 2604 US children ages six to nineteen found positive correlations between physical and psychological health and religious affiliation and/or church attendance.[23] This included 272 children whose parents (children 6–9) or the children themselves (12–19) expressed no religious affiliation. However, of this group, 22% state that religion is important and 35% attend church. The study found children ages six to nineteen who attend religious services are at lower risk of suicide or suicide attempts, as well as alcohol and drug use and dangerous sexual behavior. Some religions prohibit blood transfusions, vaccinations, contraception, and abortions, which may lead to adverse health consequences. Membership in religious groups can moderate unhealthy behavior, provide social support, and enhance marital or financial prospects, and strengthen family bonds if the religion is shared by the whole family. Religions can also help both adults and children with self-esteem, as well as provide meaning to life and reduce anxiety, but can increase guilt over perceived misdeeds. Thus it is not clear whether this positive association is because of a positive effect of religion on health, an effect in the other direction, or an as of yet unknown lurking variable.[23]

85 percent of religiously affiliated children are healthy overall, as opposed to 79 percent of non-affiliated children. 79 percent of religious children are deemed psychologically healthy compared to 73 percent of non religious children. 85 percent of children who attend church at least weekly are healthy and 83 percent of those who seldom or never attend are healthy. For psychological health the numbers are 82 and 74 percent respectively.[23]

62 percent of children say religion is important to them, 26 percent say it's somewhat important, and 13 percent say it's not important. 81 percent of those who view religion as important were found to be healthy and 65 percent of the not important group were healthy. There was no difference found among the various religious denominations in regard to health. The positive correlation between religion and health was strongest for 12-15 year olds. Overall religious belief and participation have the same positive health association as being breastfed or having a mother who went to school 2.2 years longer than one who didn't. They have half the health benefit of living with both parents. Whether this association is a causal relationship in either direction (religion to good health or good health to religion) remains to be seen (see Correlation does not imply causation).[23]

Medical care

See also: Exorcism and Faith healing
Some religions treat illness, both mental and physical, in a manner that does not heal, and in some cases exacerbates the problem. Specific examples include faith healing of certain Christian sects, the Christian Science religion which eschews medical care, and exorcisms.[24][25]

Faith based practices for healing purposes have come into direct conflict with both the medical profession and the law when victims of these practices are harmed, or in the most extreme cases, killed by these "cures."[26][27][28] A detailed study in 1998 found 140 instances of deaths of children due to religion-based medical neglect. Most of these cases involved religious parents relying on prayer to cure the child's disease, and withholding medical care.[29]

Jehovah's Witnesses object to blood transfusion primarily on religious grounds, they believe that blood is sacred and God said "abstain from blood" (Acts 15:28-29).

Religion as a by-product of children's attributes

Dawkins proposes that religion is a by-product arising from other features of the human species that are adaptive.[10] One such feature is the tendency of children to "believe, without question, whatever your grown-ups tell you" (Dawkins, 2006, p. 174).

Psychologist Paul Bloom sees religion as a by-product of children's instinctive tendency toward a dualistic view of the world, and a predisposition towards creationism.[10][30] Deborah Kelemen has also written that children are naturally teleologists, assigning a purpose to everything they come across.[31]

Islam and children
Main article: Islam and children


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Indoctrination

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoctrination

Indoctrination is the process of inculcating a person with ideas, attitudes, cognitive strategies or professional methodologies (see doctrine).[1] Humans are a social animal inescapably shaped by cultural context, and thus some degree of indoctrination is implicit in the parent–child relationship, and has an essential function in forming stable communities of shared values.

In the political context, indoctrination is often analyzed as a tool of class warfare, where institutions of the state are identified as "conspiring" to maintain the status quo. Specifically the public educational system, the police, and mental health establishment are a commonly cited modus operandi of public pacification. In the extreme, an entire state can be implicated. George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four famously singled out explicit, state-mandated propaganda initiatives of totalitarian regimes. Opinions differ on whether other forms of government are less doctrinaire, or merely achieve the same ends through less obvious methods.

The precise boundary between education and indoctrination often lies in the eye of the beholder. Some distinguish indoctrination from education on the basis that the indoctrinated person is expected not to question or critically examine the doctrine they have learned.[2] As such the term may be used pejoratively or as a buzz word, often in the context of political opinions, theology, religious dogma or anti-religious convictions.

The term is closely linked to socialization; however, in common discourse, indoctrination is often associated with negative connotations, while socialization functions as a generic descriptor conveying no specific value or connotation (some choosing to hear socialization as an inherently positive and necessary contribution to social order, others choosing to hear socialization as primarily an instrument of social oppression). Matters of doctrine (and indoctrination) have been contentious and divisive in human society dating back to antiquity. The expression attributed to Titus Lucretius Carus in the first century BCE quod ali cibus est aliis fuat acre venenum (what is food to one, is to others bitter poison) remains pertinent.

Religious

Religious indoctrination, the original sense of indoctrination, refers to a process of imparting doctrine in an authoritative way, as in catechism. Most religious groups among the revealed religions instruct new members in the principles of the religion; this is now not usually referred to as indoctrination by the religions themselves, in part because of the negative connotations the word has acquired. Mystery religions require a period of indoctrination before granting access to esoteric knowledge. (cf. Information security)

As a pejorative term, indoctrination implies forcibly or coercively causing people to act and think on the basis of a certain ideology.[3] Some secular critics believe that all religions indoctrinate their adherents, as children, and the accusation is made in the case of religious extremism.[4] Sects such as Scientology use personality tests and peer pressures to indoctrinate new members.[5] Some religions have commitment ceremonies for children 13 years and younger, such as Bar Mitzvah, Confirmation, and Shichi-Go-San. In Buddhism, temple boys are encouraged to follow the faith while young.[citation needed] Critics of religion, such as Richard Dawkins, maintain that the children of religious parents are often unfairly indoctrinated.[6]

However, indoctrination can occur, and often does occur with great frequency, in non-religious contexts. For example, in the 20th century, the former People's Socialist Republic of Albania and the former USSR instituted programs of government-sponsored atheistic indoctrination in order to promote state atheism, specifically Marxist–Leninist atheism, within their citizenry.[7][8] Sabrina P. Ramet, a professor of political science, documented that "from kindergarten onward children [were] indoctrinated with an aggressive form of atheism" and "to denounce parents who follow religious practices at home."[9] However, after the death of Albania's leader, Enver Hoxha in 1985, his successor, Ramiz Alia, adopted a relatively tolerant stance toward religious practice, referring to it as "a personal and family matter." Émigré clergymen were permitted to reenter the country in 1988 and officiate at religious services. Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, visited Tirana in 1989, where she was received by the foreign minister and by Hoxha's widow. In December 1990, the ban on religious observance was officially lifted, in time to allow thousands of Christians to attend Christmas services (see Freedom of religion in Albania).

Similarly, in the former Soviet Union, "science education [in] Soviet schools [was] used as a vehicle for atheistic indoctrination", with teachers being instructed to prepare their course "so as to conduct anti-religious educations at all times," in order to comport with state-sanctioned Marxist–Leninist values.[10] However, in 1997, several years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian government passed a law recognizing religion as being important to Russian history with Orthodox Christianity (Russian: Православие Pravoslaviye), Russia's traditional and largest religion, declared a part of Russia's "historical heritage."

Military
Main article: Recruit training

The initial psychological preparation of soldiers during training is referred to (non-pejoratively) as indoctrination.[citation needed]

Information security

In the field of information security, indoctrination is the initial briefing and instructions given before a person is granted access to secret information.[11]


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
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Everyman decries immorality
https://www.online-ministries.org/category/child-indoctrination/

Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
Brainwashing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwashing

Brainwashing (also known as mind control, menticide, coercive persuasion, thought control, thought reform, and re-education) is the concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled by certain psychological techniques. Brainwashing is said to reduce its subject’s ability to think critically or independently,[1] to allow the introduction of new, unwanted thoughts and ideas into the subject’s mind,[2] as well as to change his or her attitudes, values, and beliefs.[3][4] Although the term appears in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) of the American Psychiatric Association[5] it is not accepted as scientific fact.[6]

The concept of brainwashing was originally developed in the 1950s to explain how the Chinese government appeared to make people cooperate with them. Advocates of the concept also looked at Nazi Germany, at some criminal cases in the United States, and at the actions of human traffickers. The concept of mind control was later applied to explain conversions to some new religious movements and other groups. This resulted in scientific and legal debate;[7] with Margaret Singer, Philip Zimbardo, and some others in the anti-cult movement promoting the concept while Eileen Barker, James Richardson, and other scholars, as well as legal experts, rejected at least the popular understanding of brainwashing.[8]

Other views have been expressed by scholars including: Dick Anthony, Robert Cialdini, Stanley A. Deetz, Michael J. Freeman, Robert Jay Lifton, Joost Meerloo, Daniel Romanovsky, Kathleen Taylor, Louis Jolyon West, and Benjamin Zablocki. The concept of brainwashing is sometimes involved in legal cases, especially regarding child custody; and is also a major theme in science fiction and in criticism of modern political and corporate culture.


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   
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