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Author Topic: 9/11 debate - enter at your own risk!  (Read 968932 times)

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Poison Gas – Weapon of Choice for “False News”

http://thesaker.is/poison-gas-weapon-of-choice-for-false-news/

by Peter Koenig for the Saker blog

Poison gas is not only deadly, it often provokes a slow suffocating death. That, perpetrated on innocent children, is particularly cruel. But when such poison gas attacks are mere false flags, or by the new term, “false news”, and are used to provoke war, perhaps an all annihilating war, then humanity has turned to what it never should have become – a lowly-lowly herd of brainless zombies. Is that what we have become – brainless, greedy, selfish beings, no sense of solidarity, no respect for other beings; I am not even talking about humans, but any living being.

Poison gas, the weapon of choice for fear. Poisoning in Salisbury of the former Russian double-agent, Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, visiting her dad from Moscow. Poisoning with a nerve gas, called Novichok that was allegedly made in Russia. In the meantime, we know that nerve gas made in the former Soviet Union, now non-existent in Russia, was military grade and deadly. The gas used for the alleged attack was not deadly. We also know by now that the UK – all of their highest officials, from PM May down the ladder, lied so miserably that they will have a hard time recovering. It will backfire. Unlike the foreign secretary, Johnson boy pretended their secret bio-gas / bio-weapon laboratory Porton Down, just 13 km down the road from Salisbury, where the pair was allegedly found unconscious on a park bench, assured him the gas was made in Russia. Alas, the laboratories chief chemists testified later to the media that they could not be sure that the substance was made in Russia. No, of course not.

In fact, Porton Down, working in close collaboration with the CIA, is a highly sophisticated chemical warfare facility that can easily make the gas themselves – at the grades they please, deadly or not so deadly, if it should serve a “false news” purpose – which this did.

Were father and daughter indeed poisoned? – This is a legitimate question. Who has seen them since the alleged poisoning occurred on 28 March? – They disappeared from the public eye. Apparently, they are both recovering, Yulia having been released from hospital a few days ago, but has not been seen by anyone in public, nor been able to talk to the media, lest she could say “something” the public is not allowed to know. Her father is also recovering and may be released soon – released from where? – Is this all a farce?

An aunt talked to Yulia from Moscow, where she noticed that Yulia was not free to talk. The aunt wanted to visit her niece in the UK but was obviously denied a visa.

Where are father and daughter? – Washington has “offered” them a new home and new identity in the US, to avoid further poisoning attempts… how ridiculous! A blind man or woman must see that this is another farce, or more correctly, an outright abduction. The two won’t have a chance to resist. They are just taken away – not to talk anymore to anyone ever. – That’s the way the story goes. The lies are protected, and the “Russia did it” syndrome will prevail – prevail in the dumb folded public, in the herd of pigs that we all have become, as Goebbels would say.

And the saga continues. The saga to drum up war. That’s the purpose of it all. Nothing else – Russia, the evil nation, led by an evil leader, must be subdued and conquered. But the empire needs the public for their support. And the empire is almost there. It disposes of a vicious media corporate army – that lies flagrantly about anything that money can buy. It’s like spitting in the face of the world, and nobody seems to care, or worse, even to notice.

On the other side of the Mediterranean is Syria. A vast and noble country, Syria, with a leader who truly loves his people and country, a leader who has despite a foreign induced war – not civil war – a proxy war, instigated and funded by Washington and its vassal allies in Europe and the Middle East; Syria, a highly educated socialist country that has shared the benefit of her resources, free education, free medical services, free basic infrastructure, with her people. This Syria must fall. Such strength cannot be tolerated by the all-dominating west. Like Iraq and Libya, also socialist countries once-upon-a-time, and like Syria, secular Muslim nations, sharing their countries wealth with the people, such countries must fall.

According to Pentagon planners and those Zion-neofascist thinktanks that designed the PNAC (Plan for a New American Century), as the chief instrument of US foreign policy, we know since Wesley Clark, the former Supreme Allied commander and Chief of NATO in Europe (1997-2000) talked to Democracy Now in 2007 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8FhZnFZ6TY ), saying that within 5 years seven countries must fall, one of them is Syria. – Since 2011, the Syrian people have been bombarded by US and NATO and Saudi funded terrorists, causing tens of thousands of deaths, and millions of refugees. Now, even more blatantly, US bases are vying to occupying the northern third of Syria, totally illegally, but nobody says beep. Not even the UN.

The recent fake gas attack on Douma outside of Damascus, has allegedly killed 80 to 120 people, mostly women and children. Of course, that sells best in the propaganda theatre – women and children. Strangely, like last time the infamous White Helmets discovered the gas victims, including a gas canister-like bomb laying on a bed, having been shot through the roof of a house… a totally and unprofessionally staged event. As Russian military quickly discovered and reported. They called on an independent investigation, one that could not be bought and corrupted by Washington. President Assad invited a team of investigators to inspect the scene.

Instead of heeding this invitation, Trump, the bully, calls Mr. Assad an “animal” and a “monster”, twittering his brainless aggressions throughout the world. Tell you what, Mr. Trump, Bashar al-Assad is a far better human being than you are a monster. You and your dark handlers don’t even deserve being called human. Mr. Assad has regard and respect for his people, attempts to protect them and has so far succeeded with the help of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, recovering the last bits of Syrian territory from the terrorist, except of course, the northern part, where the chief terrorist and the world’s only rogue state has itself installed, the US of A. – Why in the world would Mr. Assad choose to gas his own people? Especially, when he is winning the war? – People, ask yourself, cui bono (who benefits?) and the answer is simple: The western aggressors, who seek a reason to mass bomb Syria into even more rubble, causing even more death and destitution. That’s who.

While you, Donald, and those monsters that direct you from behind the scenes, have no, but absolutely no respect for your people, for any people on this globe, for that matter, not even for your kind, for your greed-no-end kind of elite, as you bring the world to the brink of an all-destructive, all killing annihilating war.

Since the other fake event, 9/11, we are, of course, already in a “soft version” of WWIII, but that’s not enough, the United States needs a hard war, so badly it doesn’t shy away from destroying itself. That’s how blinded your own propaganda has made you Americans, you generals, you corporate “leaders” (sic-sic) – and all you Congress puppets. That is the sheer truth. You better read this and wake up. Otherwise your dead sentence is hastened by your own greed and ignorance.

Both Russia and the US drafted a Security Council Resolution – which of course are both not approved, with Nikki Haley lambasting Russia, accusing them of being responsible for the countless deaths in Syria – pointing again to the children and women, making up the majority. Again, it sells best in the world of psychological propaganda, while evil Nikki Haley knows very well who has caused all these deaths by the millions, destitution and refugees by the millions, tens of millions throughout the Middle East and the world – her own country, directly or through NATO, the European puppets allies and proxy wars, paid and funded by Washington and by elbow-twisting her vassals.

On 9 April – UNSC – while Nikki Haley, repeats and over-repeats her lies and fake accusations, the Russian Ambassador to the UN, Mr. Vassily Nebenzia, listens. And then in a twenty-minute statement of sheer intelligence, he dismantles all the lies, and lays bare the truth, about all the fakeness being played out internationally. The depth with which he addresses the assembly is concise and so brilliant, none of his UK, French and German counterparts could have ever come close to a statement of this magnitude and excellence. Even Ms. Haley can’t help glancing over ever-so often to Vassily Nebenzia, as he speaks (http://thesaker.is/russian-ambassador-to-the-un-vasily-nebenzea-addressing-the-un-sc-9-april-2018/ ). Her eyes reveal some kind of hidden admiration for what he says. – After all, she can’t be as dumb as she is paid for to look and sound.

By now anybody who dares not just reading and listening to the mainstream presstitute “fake news”, but has the courage to dig into the truth news, RT, TeleSur, CGTN, PressTV – and a few others, or websites like Global Research, The Saker Blog, ICH, NEO, Greanville Post CounterCurrent, Dissident Voice and many other trustworthy sources – knows about the lies and the only, but the very only purpose these false flags cum false news serve: Provoking a war with Russia, subjugating and dividing Syria, and the Middle East and becoming the hegemonic masters of the universe.

For the simple reason, and hardly anybody talks or writes about it – the US economy is based on war, is based on weapon manufacturing and international banking which finances weapon manufacturing and the exploitation of mineral resources coveted by weapon manufacturing.

The entire war industry with all its associated civil services and industries, of banking, electronics, aviation, mining…. makes up more than half of the US GDP – but of course, it’s never broken down that way. The chosen people will control the world. Well, they do already – financially at least the western part of our globe. But it’s not enough. They will not stop, before they burry themselves in their own-dug graves, or rather in one massive mass-grave. But, please, do take all your fakeness, from money, to lies, to hypocrisy and more lies and coercion and sanctions and blackmail with you – never to surface again. And give peace a chance – for those who survive your (almost) terminal assault on humanity.


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BBC Piece Defining 'Modern British Identity' To Schoolkids Doesn't Go Over Well

http://www.informationliberation.com/index.php/articles/2011/06/20/hackers-declare-war-on-government-agencies/files/?id=58239

"Incidentally, it's not going over very well. As of this posting, the video has only 12 upvotes compared to over 1,900 downvotes. Comments are disabled. "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaMvsDmeO5g

It is at 2,300 downvotes now and only 13 up.

British National Identity

https://www.historytoday.com/robert-colls/british-national-identity

Robert Colls asks what British identity is - and what it is not.

What it is not

1. National identity is not something governments can invent. It is more a feeling than an opinion and not a policy statement. Like all identities it is not unduly hampered by being difficult to put into words.

2. National identity should not be confused with national values. The values which politicians have tried to lay on Britons are no different from the claims of other states, even nasty ones. If these values bind us, why do they need setting out? If they don’t bind us, in what sense are they ours?

3. Nor is national identity an aggregate of all the diverse values that may exist in a society at any one time. Indeed, a society with high levels of diversity may have to face the fact that it has no identity to speak of. Such a society may equate diversity with tolerance, but tolerance needs the nation there in the first place to do the tolerating.

4. Much recent scholarship stresses the exclusivity of nations but misses the emergent quality of national identity, particularly the process of inviting people to become more equal and alike. In the British case national identity was built on the edging together of state and nation over a long history of political compromise and on a series of modern wars in which the Anglo-British state was remarkably successful. So closely did the British peoples appear to identify with aspects of this settlement, the political class has long been able to claim that it does not need to be regulated by a written constitution.

5. British national identity was not born of a deplorable past. It is true that British dominion was not built according to the principles of the Equal Opportunities Commission and we have to accept, too, that it was interwoven with imperialism and what we now call racism. In this it was not alone among other imperialisms – including republican and socialist imperialisms. At the same time we have to accept that British national identity survived because it was a broadly acceptable expression of the British people, to the British people, if not by the British people. Ireland was the great failure in this regard. Even so, most Irish were late in finding union with Great Britain an unacceptable representation of who they were.

6. British national identity has not always been called that. We have to be ready to deal with different names and concepts. E.P. Thompson and G.A. Williams, for instance, demonstrated that it was through their myths of national origin that the English and Welsh working poor became class conscious. It was clear to them, for example, that being ethnically Welsh or English was incompatible with being a factory slave or a dispossessed debtor.

7. National identity can be expressed in images and representations. But in order to be meaningful it has to fit experience and think of itself as a long-term arrangement. Although there has been much talk in recent years of ‘invented’ nations, all working nation states seek to underwrite the long-term obligations upon which all national relationships depend.

8. National identity is not just that which it is not. Sometimes called a theory of otherness, ‘alterity’ stems from the psycholinguistic disciplines and is ubiquitous in contemporary university teaching. Whole continents and epochs of human experience are being taught to undergraduates in terms of a ‘we’ that relates to an ‘other’. So ‘we’ becomes a very unstable pronoun where all identities are rendered provisional, multiple, situational and relative. There is not even room for the ‘we’ of human nature.

But in an individual any notion of reacting to the other without a prior sense of self would be seen as a pathological condition. In the nation that sense derives from a living relationship with the past. Most people, like most nations, are capable of thinking of themselves as a precondition to thinking for themselves.

9. If you want a national identity, people have got to want to identify and have a reason for doing so.

What has happened to it?

Our current predicament is that the main channels of national identity as mapped, for example, by Linda Colley in Britons (1992) have almost run out. In the 1960s relationships that for over 200 years had sustained the British people began to erode: their relationship with Parliament and the belief that it was sovereign and essentially belonged to them as key component of a free society; their relationship with the armed forces and the idea of a superior British imperial world; their relationship with Protestantism and the idea of a free heritage; their relationship with manufacturing and their reputation as the world’s oldest industrial nation; and finally their relationship with themselves as British and alike and growing more alike in fundamental ways. When the Millennium Dome was erected its organisers didn’t know what to put in it. They certainly didn’t put any of this stuff in it. In other words in 2001 there was no ‘manifest doctrine’ of Britishness as there had been in 1851 or even in 1951. It was not so much that the British people had ceased believing in themselves; it was more that over a very short period the conditions of that belief had evaporated. Between the Festival of Britain and the Millennium Dome, say, British national identity was no more.

In recent times the British state’s thinking has been federal, multicultural, and free market – a soft Thatcherite mix which, according to the last five prime ministers at least, was more befitting the minimum process known as ‘Europe’ and the maximum process known as globalisation. Our current predicament is that none of this thinking has been sympathetic to the principle and the practice of British national identity.

Robert Colls is the author of Identity of England (OUP, 2002). He will take up the Chair of Cultural History at De Montfort University in October.

'This isn't the Britain we fought for,' say the 'unknown warriors' of WWII

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1229643/This-isnt-Britain-fought-say-unknown-warriors-WWII.html

By Tony Rennell for MailOnline
UPDATED: 22:55, 21 November 2009

Sarah Robinson was just a teenager when World War II broke out.

She endured the Blitz, watching for fires during Luftwaffe air raids armed with a bucket of sand.

Often she would walk ten miles home from work in the blackout, with bombs falling around her.

As soon as she turned 18, she joined the Royal Navy to do her bit for the war effort.

Hers was a small part in a huge, history-making enterprise, and her contribution epitomises her generation's sense of service and sacrifice.

Nearly 400,000 Britons died. Millions more were scarred by the experience, physically and mentally.

But was it worth it? Her answer - and the answer of many of her contemporaries, now in their 80s and 90s - is a resounding No.


---------------------------
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Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
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http://www.overunityresearch.com/index.php?topic=1195.msg65827#msg65827

The Constitutional Crisis & The Solution!

http://denouncethedeception.co.uk/constitutional-crisis-and-the-solution

The European Communities Act received Royal Assent on the 17th of October 1972. This Act resulted in the United Kingdom joining the EEC (European Economic Community), which had been established by the Treaty of Rome, signed on the 25th of March 1957. Britain finally became a member of the EEC on the 1st of January 1973. This state of constitutional illegality was ultimately entrenched on the 19th of June, 2008 when Royal Assent was given to the Lisbon Treaty. This final “Treaty” of the now-political European Union was ratified by all Member States of the EU on the 13th of November 2009.

When Edward Heath signed the Treaty of Accession to the Treaty of Rome in Brussels on the 22nd of January 1972, the then Prime Minister, Edward Heath knowingly and willfully tricked, deceived And betrayed the British people into handing over National Sovereignty to a foreign authority under the guise of a trade deal, that trade deal being the ECTA (The common Market). Whereas Heaths true intention was to surrender our Sovereignty, he lied to the whole country as the people were unaware they were voting for Foreign Rule and under Constitutional law it stands as the most grievous high treason in British history.

The famous Lord ‘Kilmuir Letter’ (kept hidden for 30 years) made it painfully obvious that the British Government at this time were ready to commit very serious crimes against the people, and did. In this letter, Edward Heath is reminded of the treacherous steps that he was about to take by the then-Lord Chancellor:

    ‘THE KILMUIR LETTER’

    “My Dear Ted,
    You wrote to me on the 30th November about the constitutional implications of our becoming a party to the Treaty of Rome. I have now had an opportunity of considering what you say in your letter and have studied the memoranda you sent me. I agree with you that there are important constitutional issues involved.

    I have no doubt that if we do sign the Treaty, we shall suffer some loss of sovereignty, but before attempting to define or evaluate the loss I wish to make one general observation. At the end of the day, the issue whether or not to join the European Economic Community must be decided on broad political grounds and if it appears from what follows in this letter that I find the constitutional objections serious that does not mean that I consider them conclusive. I do, however, think it important that we should appreciate clearly from the outset exactly what, from the constitutional point of view, is involved if we sign the treaty, and it is with that consideration in mind that I have addressed myself to the questions you have raised.


    He is clear that if we do sign the agreement with the EEC we will suffer some loss of Sovereignty. This is clearly an act of Treason because our Constitution allows no surrender of any part of our Constitution to a foreign power beyond the control of the Queen in parliament. This is evidenced by the convention which says:

    (Parliament may do many things but what it may not do is surrender any of its rights to govern unless we have been defeated in war).


    And the ruling given to King Edward 3rd in 1366 in which he was told that King John’s action in surrendering England to the Pope, and ruling England as a Vassal King to Rome was illegal because England did not belong to John he only held it in trust for those who followed on. The Money the Pope was demanding as tribute was not to be paid. Because England’s Kings were not vassal Kings to the Pope and the money was not owed.


    Adherence to the Treaty of Rome would, in my opinion, affect our sovereignty in three ways:-
    Parliament would be required to surrender some of its functions to the organs of the community;
    Answer as above.
    The Crown would be called on to transfer part of its treaty-making power to those organs of the community;
    The Constitution confers treaty making powers only on the Sovereign and the Sovereign cannot transfer those powers to a foreign power or even our own parliament because they are not the incumbent Sovereigns to give away as they only hold those powers in trust for those who follow on.

    Our courts of law would sacrifice some degree of independence by becoming subordinate in certain respects to the European Court of Justice.
    It is a Praemunire to allow any case to be taken to a foreign court not under the control of the Sovereign. The European Court Justice or the European court of Human rights are foreign courts not under the control of our Sovereign. Praemunire is a crime akin to Treason.
    The position of Parliament
    It is clear that the memorandum prepared by your Legal Advisers that the Council of could eventually (after the system of qualified majority voting had come into force) make regulations which would be binding on us even against our wishes, and which would in fact become for us part of the law of the land.

    There are two ways in which this requirement of the Treaty could in practice be implemented:-
    It is a Praemunire to allow any laws or regulations not made by the Sovereign in parliament to take effect as law in England. This is illegal under the Acts of Treason 1351, the Act of Praemunire 1392, The Act of Supremacy 1559, and the Declaration and Bill of Rights 1688/9.
    Parliament could legislate ad hoc on each occasion that the Council make regulations requiring action by us. The difficulty would be that, since Parliament can bind neither itself nor its successors, we could only comply with our obligations under the Treaty if Parliament abandoned its right of passing independent judgement on the legislative proposals put before it. A parallel is the constitutional convention whereby Parliament passes British North American Bills without question at the request of the Parliament of Canada, in this respect Parliament here has substance, if not in form, abdicated its sovereign position, and it would have pro tanto, to do the same for the Community.
    No such power exists for parliament to do this. This would be an Act of Treason under the 1351 Treason Act, A Praemunire under the 1392 Act of Praemunire, an Act of Treason under the 1559 Act of Supremacy, and the 1688/9 Declaration and Bill of Rights.
    It would in theory be possible for parliament to enact at the outset legislation which would give automatic force of law to any existing or future regulations made by the appropriate organs of the Community. For Parliament to do this would go far beyond the most extensive delegation of powers even in wartime that we have ever experienced and I do not think there is any likelihood of this being acceptable to the House of Commons. Whichever course were adopted, Parliament would retain in theory the liberty to repeal the relevant Act or Acts, but I would agree with you that we must act on the assumption that entry into the Community would be irrevocable, we should therefore to accept a position where Parliament had no more power to repeal us own enactments than it has in practice to abrogate the statute of Westminster. In short. Parliament would have to transfer to the Council, or other appropriate organ of the Community, its substantive powers of legislating over the whole of a very important field.
    There is no constitutionally acceptable method of doing this because it would be tantamount to a total abrogation of their duty to govern us according to our laws and customs. And it would be an Act of Treason under the 1351 Treason Act, A Praemunire under the 1392 Act of Praemunire, and Treason under the 1559 Act of Supremacy, and the Declaration and Bill of Rights 1688/9.

    Treaty-making Powers
    The proposition that every treaty entered into by the United Kingdom does to some extent fetter our freedom of action is plainly true. Some treaties such as GATT and O.E.E.C. restrict severely our liberty to make agreements with third parties and I should not regard it as detrimental to our sovereign that, by signing the Treaty of Rome, we undertook not to make tariff or trade agreements without the Council’s approval. But to transfer to the council or the Commission the power to make such treaties on our behalf, and even against our will, is an entirely different proposition. There seems to me to be a clear distinction between the exercise of sovereignty involved in the conscious acceptance by us of obligations under treaty-making powers and the total or partial surrender of sovereignty involved in our cession of these powers to some other body. To confer a sovereign state’s treaty-making powers on an international organisation is the first step on the road which leads by way of confederation to the fully federal state. I do not suggest that what is involved would necessarily carry us very far in this direction, but it would be a most significant step and one for which there is no precedent in our case. Moreover, a further surrender of sovereignty of parliamentary supremacy would necessarily be involved: as you know although the treaty-making power is vested in the Crown. Parliamentary sanction is required for any treaty which involves a change in the law or the imposition of taxation to take two examples and we cannot ratify such a treaty unless Parliament consents. But if binding treaties are to be entered into on our behalf, Parliament must surrender this function and either resign itself to becoming a rubber stamp or give the Community, in effect, the power to amend our domestic laws.
    This is a surrender of our Sovereignty a clear Act of Treason under the 1351 Treason Act and a Praemunire, under the 1392 Act of Praemunire, it is Treason under the 1559 Act of Supremacy and the 1688/9 Declaration and Bill of Rights.
    Independence of the Courts
    There is no precedent for our final appellate tribunal being required to refer questions of law (even in a limited field) to another court and as I assume to be the implication of ‘refer’- to accept that court’s decision. You will remember that when a similar proposal was considered in connection with the Council of Europe we felt strong objection to it. I have no doubt that the whole of the legal profession in this country would share my dislike for such a proposal which must inevitably detract from the independence and authority of our courts.
    Of those three objections, the first two are by far the more important. I must emphasise that in my view the surrenders of sovereignly involved are serious ones and I think that as a matter of practical politics, it will not be easy to persuade Parliament or the public to accept them. I am sure that it would be a great mistake to underestimate the force of objections to them. But these objections ought to be brought out into the open now because, if we attempt to gloss over them at this stage those who are opposed to the whole idea of our joining the Community will certainly seize on them with more damaging effect later on. Having said this, I would emphasise once again that, although those constitutional considerations must be given their lull weight when we come to balance the arguments on either side, I do not for one moment wish to convey the impression that they must necessarily tip the scale. In the long run we shall have to decide whether economic factors require us to make some sacrifices of sovereignty: my concern is to ensure that we should see exactly what it is that we are being called on to sacrifice, and how serious our loss would be. It is a Praemunire to subject Her Majesty’s Courts of law to the domination of a foreign court outside of Her Majesty’s control.”


The once-top secret documents titled “Shoe-horned into the EU” which was also obtained (under the title ‘FCO 30/1048’) from the Public Records office via the 30 year rule highlights the acts of Sedition and Treason along with other crimes Committed by the Heath administration. Every Government that have followed since have been complicit!

http://www.overunityresearch.com/index.php?topic=1195.msg66369#msg66369

Shocking claims Tony Blair led a mass migration conspiracy to ensure Labour's rule

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/648008/Tony-Blair-Labour-immigration-asylum-seekers-UK-Brexit-EU-referendum

TONY Blair betrayed Britain for his own political ends by overseeing a massive conspiracy to flood the country with millions of migrants, an explosive book has claimed.

By Nick Gutteridge
PUBLISHED: 11:03, Sat, Feb 27, 2016 | UPDATED: 16:15, Sat, Feb 27, 2016

The controversial Prime Minister cynically dismantled UK border controls so that two million migrants could settle in the country - and vote for him in future elections.

He then gagged Labour officials and his most senior ministers, telling them not to discuss immigration in public under any circumstances for fear of a backlash, it is alleged.

The Labour leader knew the British people would ferociously oppose his conspiracy if they realised what was happening.

So he banned politicians from discussing even the positive aspects of immigration in case doing so brought the public’s attention to the huge numbers of people entering the country from abroad, the book claims.

The disturbing conspiracy claims have been put forward by award winning investigative journalist Tom Bower, who interviewed 200 MPs, ministers and civil servants from the Blair years to build up a picture of his Government.

Shocking interviews claim to show how the former prime minister betrayed the electorate for political and ideological reasons, with one saying he “shudders” at the thought that such a man was ever trusted with running the country.

They also accuse Blair of hushed up members of his own party as he carried out a great multiculturalism experiment without the permission or backing of the British people.

Blair and Labour had barely mentioned immigration in their campaigning ahead of the 1997 election, and did not actively portray themselves as pro-immigration.

But as soon as he had the keys to Downing Street the book reveals the new Prime Minister ordered border chiefs to open the floodgates, even telling them to reclassify unskilled asylum seekers as people moving to Britain for work so that he could drum up the economic benefits of mass migration.

He also appointed a fervently pro-immigration minister to the border control brief, who astonishingly ruled against deporting failed asylum seekers because it would be too “emotional” for them, it is claimed.

As a result Britain’s population was swelled with more than two million foreigners during the Blair years, the vast majority of whom would back the Labour party who let them in and lavished them with benefits at future elections.

According to the claims the aim of the project was to make the country “see the benefit of a multicultural society”. Government insiders have also said that Blair did not see it as his job to “control immigration” to Britain.

But the controversial leader knew his conspiracy was against the British people’s wishes from the very start, telling ministers and officials: “Don’t mention the advantages of immigration in public because they won’t even want that.”

Instead he quietly relaxed rules on allowing foreign spouses and students in and effectively opened up an asylum seeker free-for-all in which nobody was ever deported, even if their application to stay in the UK failed.

The book says 350,000 asylum seekers benefited this way. In 2002 alone, Blair gave the go-ahead for 150,000 work permits with most of the recipients, including the unskilled, going on to become UK citizens.

Some of the most shocking revelations centre around the role of former immigration minister Barbara Roche, who was handpicked for the role by Blair and served from 1999 to 2001.

During this period she quietly adopted policies – with her leader’s approval – that dramatically changed the face of the UK forever.

Upon her appointment, it is said she told a senior immigration official: “Asylum seekers should be allowed to stay in Britain. Removal takes too long and it’s emotional.”

She changed the rules to allow more work permits to be issued, especially to people who would previously have been considered asylum seekers.

Stephen Boys Smith, who was then head of the Home Office’s immigration directorate, said: “It was clear that Roche wanted more immigrants to come to Britain. She didn’t see her job as controlling entry into Britain, but by looking at the wider picture in a ‘holistic way’ she wanted us to see the benefit of a multicultural society.”

Former Labour speech writer Andrew Neather allegedly told the author of the book that the aim was to “rub the right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date”.

According to the book an extraordinary row between then Home Secretary, Jack Straw, and Blair illustrated the divisions within the Government.

Mr Straw reportedly asked the then-prime minister: “Isn’t immigration the sort of issue which can blow up in our face?”

But Blair simply replied: “Immigration won’t be an issue. Immigration is good for Britain.”

The revelations come as Britain prepares for a referendum on its membership of the EU, to take place on June 23.

Immigration is expected to form a key part of the debate, with Europe undergoing an unprecedented migration crisis which has brought the Schengen zone to the brink of collapse.

The Blair government oversaw mass migration from eastern European countries who gained membership of the 28-nation bloc and there are concerns that Turkish citizens could gain the right to move to Britain when they are granted visa-free travel within the EU from October.

Express.co.uk has contacted Tony Blair’s office for comment.

The book Broken Vows: Tony Blair - The Tragedy of Power will be out on March 3.

http://www.overunityresearch.com/index.php?topic=1195.msg67350#msg67350

In recent times the British state’s thinking has been federal, multicultural, and free market – a soft Thatcherite mix which, according to the last five prime ministers at least, was more befitting the minimum process known as ‘Europe’ and the maximum process known as globalisation. Our current predicament is that none of this thinking has been sympathetic to the principle and the practice of British national identity.


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Social contract

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

In both moral and political philosophy, the social contract is a theory or model that originated during the Age of Enlightenment. Usually, the social contract concerns the origin of society and the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual.[1] Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler or magistrate (or to the decision of a majority), in exchange for protection of their remaining rights. The question of the relation between natural and legal rights, therefore, is often an aspect of social contract theory. The term takes its name from The Social Contract (French: Du contrat social ou Principes du droit politique), a 1762 book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau that discussed this concept.

Although the antecedents of social contract theory are found in antiquity, in Greek and Stoic philosophy and Roman and Canon Law, the heyday of the social contract was the mid-17th to early 19th centuries, when it emerged as the leading doctrine of political legitimacy. The starting point for most social contract theories is an examination of the human condition absent of any political order that Thomas Hobbes termed the "state of nature".[2] In this condition, individuals' actions are bound only by their personal power and conscience. From this shared starting point, social contract theorists seek to demonstrate, in different ways, why a rational individual would voluntarily consent to give up their natural freedom to obtain the benefits of political order.

Hugo Grotius (1625), Thomas Hobbes (1651), Samuel von Pufendorf (1673), John Locke (1689), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762), and Immanuel Kant (1797) are among the most prominent of 17th-century and 18th-century theorists of social contract and natural rights. Each solved the problem of political authority in a different way. Grotius posited that individual human beings had natural rights. Thomas Hobbes famously said that in a "state of nature", human life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". In the absence of political order and law, everyone would have unlimited natural freedoms, including the "right to all things" and thus the freedom to plunder, rape, and murder; there would be an endless "war of all against all" (bellum omnium contra omnes). To avoid this, free men contract with each other to establish political community (civil society) through a social contract in which they all gain security in return for subjecting themselves to an absolute sovereign, one man or an assembly of men. Though the sovereign's edicts may well be arbitrary and tyrannical, Hobbes saw absolute government as the only alternative to the terrifying anarchy of a state of nature. Hobbes asserted that humans consent to abdicate their rights in favor of the absolute authority of government (whether monarchical or parliamentary). Pufendorf disputed Hobbes's equation of a state of nature with war.[3]

Alternatively, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau have argued that we gain civil rights in return for accepting the obligation to respect and defend the rights of others, giving up some freedoms to do so. The central assertion of social contract approaches is that law and political order are not natural, but are instead human creations. The social contract and the political order it creates are simply the means towards an end—the benefit of the individuals involved—and legitimate only to the extent that they fulfill their part of the agreement. According to Hobbes (in whose view government is not a party to the original contract) citizens are not obligated to submit to the government when it is too weak to act effectively to suppress factionalism and civil unrest. According to other social contract theorists, when the government fails to secure their natural rights (Locke) or satisfy the best interests of society (called the "general will" in Rousseau), citizens can withdraw their obligation to obey, or change the leadership through elections or other means including, when necessary, violence.

Locke believed that natural rights were inalienable, and that the rule of God therefore superseded government authority, and Rousseau believed that democracy (self-rule) was the best way of ensuring the general welfare while maintaining individual freedom under the rule of law. The Lockean concept of the social contract was invoked in the United States Declaration of Independence. Social contract theories were eclipsed in the 19th century in favor of utilitarianism, Hegelianism, and Marxism, and were revived in the 20th century, notably in the form of a thought experiment by John Rawls.[3]

Critical theories

Consent of the governed

An early critic of social contract theory was Rousseau's friend, the philosopher David Hume, who in 1742 published an essay "Of Civil Liberty". The second part of this essay, entitled "Of the Original Contract",[16] stresses that the concept of a "social contract" is a convenient fiction:

As no party, in the present age can well support itself without a philosophical or speculative system of principles annexed to its political or practical one; we accordingly find that each of the factions into which this nation is divided has reared up a fabric of the former kind, in order to protect and cover that scheme of actions which it pursues. ... The one party [defenders of the absolute and divine right of kings, or Tories], by tracing up government to the DEITY, endeavor to render it so sacred and inviolate that it must be little less than sacrilege, however tyrannical it may become, to touch or invade it in the smallest article. The other party [the Whigs, or believers in constitutional monarchy], by founding government altogether on the consent of the PEOPLE suppose that there is a kind of original contract by which the subjects have tacitly reserved the power of resisting their sovereign, whenever they find themselves aggrieved by that authority with which they have for certain purposes voluntarily entrusted him.

— David Hume, "On Civil Liberty" [II.XII.1][16]
Hume argued that consent of the governed was the ideal foundation on which a government should rest, but that it had not actually occurred this way in general.

My intention here is not to exclude the consent of the people from being one just foundation of government where it has place. It is surely the best and most sacred of any. I only contend that it has very seldom had place in any degree and never almost in its full extent. And that therefore some other foundation of government must also be admitted.

— Ibid II.XII.20

Natural law and constitutionalism

Legal scholar Randy Barnett has argued[17] that, while presence in the territory of a society may be necessary for consent, this does not constitute consent to all rules the society might make regardless of their content. A second condition of consent is that the rules be consistent with underlying principles of justice and the protection of natural and social rights, and have procedures for effective protection of those rights (or liberties). This has also been discussed by O. A. Brownson,[18] who argued that, in a sense, three "constitutions" are involved: first, the constitution of nature that includes all of what the Founders called "natural law"; second, the constitution of society, an unwritten and commonly understood set of rules for the society formed by a social contract before it establishes a government, by which it does establish the third, a constitution of government. To consent, a necessary condition is that the rules be constitutional in that sense.

Tacit consent

The theory of an implicit social contract holds that by remaining in the territory controlled by some society, which usually has a government, people give consent to join that society and be governed by its government, if any. This consent is what gives legitimacy to such a government.

Other writers have argued that consent to join the society is not necessarily consent to its government. For that, the government must be set up according to a constitution of government that is consistent with the superior unwritten constitutions of nature and society.[18]

Explicit Consent

The theory of an implicit social contract also goes under the principles of explicit consent[19]. The main difference between Tacit consent and explicit consent is that explicit consent is meant to leave no room for misinterpretation. Moreover, you should directly state what it is that you want and the person has to respond in a concise manner that either confirms or denies the proposition.

Voluntarism

According to the will theory of contract, a contract is not presumed valid unless all parties voluntarily agree to it, either tacitly or explicitly, without coercion. Lysander Spooner, a 19th-century lawyer and staunch supporter of a right of contract between individuals, argued in his essay No Treason that a supposed social contract cannot be used to justify governmental actions such as taxation because government will initiate force against anyone who does not wish to enter into such a contract. As a result, he maintains that such an agreement is not voluntary and therefore cannot be considered a legitimate contract at all.

Modern Anglo-American law, like European civil law, is based on a will theory of contract, according to which all terms of a contract are binding on the parties because they chose those terms for themselves. This was less true when Hobbes wrote Leviathan; at that time more importance was attached to consideration, meaning a mutual exchange of benefits necessary to the formation of a valid contract, and most contracts had implicit terms that arose from the nature of the contractual relationship rather than from the choices made by the parties. Accordingly, it has been argued that social contract theory is more consistent with the contract law of the time of Hobbes and Locke than with the contract law of our time, and that certain features in the social contract which seem anomalous to us, such as the belief that we are bound by a contract formulated by our distant ancestors, would not have seemed as strange to Hobbes' contemporaries as they do to us.[20]


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Doug Casey Warns "It's Going To Get Very Unpleasant In The US At Some Point Soon"

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-11/doug-casey-warns-its-going-get-very-unpleasant-us-some-point-soon

Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

You’re likely aware that I’m a libertarian. But I’m actually more than a libertarian. I don’t believe in the right of the State to exist. The reason is that anything that has a monopoly of force is extremely dangerous.

As Mao Tse-tung, lately one of the world’s leading experts on government, said: “The power of the state comes out of a barrel of a gun.”

There are two possible ways for people to relate to each other, either voluntarily or coercively. And the State is pure institutionalized coercion. It’s not just unnecessary, but antithetical, for a civilized society. And that’s increasingly true as technology advances. It was never moral, but at least it was possible, in oxcart days, for bureaucrats to order things around. Today it’s ridiculous.

Everything that needs doing can and will be done by the market, by entrepreneurs who fill the needs of other people for a profit. The State is a dead hand that imposes itself on society. That belief makes me, of course, an anarchist.

People have a misconception about anarchists. That they’re these violent people, running around in black capes with little round bombs. This is nonsense. Of course there are violent anarchists. There are violent dentists. There are violent Christians. Violence, however, has nothing to do with anarchism. Anarchism is simply a belief that a ruler isn’t necessary, that society organizes itself, that individuals own themselves, and the State is actually counterproductive.

It’s always been a battle between the individual and the collective. I’m on the side of the individual.

I simply don’t believe anyone has a right to initiate aggression against anyone else. Is that an unreasonable belief?

Let me put it this way. Since government is institutionalized coercion—a very dangerous thing—it should do nothing but protect people in its bailiwick from physical coercion.

What does that imply? It implies a police force to protect you from coercion within its boundaries, an army to protect you from coercion from outsiders, and a court system to allow you to adjudicate disputes without resorting to coercion.

I could live happily with a government that did just those things. Unfortunately the US Government is only marginally competent in providing services in those three areas. Instead, it tries to do everything else.

The argument can be made that the largest criminal entity today is not some Colombian cocaine gang, it’s the US Government. And they’re far more dangerous. They have a legal monopoly to do anything they want with you. Don’t conflate the government with America—it’s a separate entity, with its own interests, as distinct as General Motors or the Mafia. I’d rather deal with the Mafia than I would with any agency of the US Government.

Even under the worst circumstances, even if the Mafia controlled the United States, I can’t believe Tony Soprano or Al Capone would try to steal 40% of people’s income from them every year. They couldn’t get away with it. But—perhaps because we’re said to be a democracy—the US Government is able to masquerade as “We the People.” That’s an anachronism, at best. The US has mutated into a domestic multicultural empire. The average person has been propagandized into believing that it’s patriotic to do as he’s told. “We have to obey libraries of regulations, and I’m happy to pay my taxes. It’s the price we pay for civilization.” No, that’s just the opposite of the fact. Those things are a sign that civilization is degrading, that the society is becoming less individually responsible, and has to be held together by force.

It’s all about control. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The type of people that gravitate to government like to control other people. Contrary to what we’re told to think, that’s why you get the worst people—not the best—who want to get into government.

What about voting? Can that change and improve things? Unlikely. I can give you five reasons why you should not vote in an election (see this article). See if you agree.

Hark back to the ’60s when they said, “Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?” But let’s take it further: Suppose they gave a tax and nobody paid? Suppose they gave an election and nobody voted? What that would do is delegitimize government. I applaud the fact that only half of Americans vote. If that number dropped to 25%, 10%, then 0%, perhaps everybody would look around and say, “Wait a minute, none of us believe in this evil charade. I don’t like Tweedledee from the left wing of the Demopublican Party any more than I like Tweedledum from its right wing…”

Remember you don’t get the best and the brightest going into government. There are two kinds of people. You’ve got people that like to control physical reality—things. And people that like to control other people. That second group, those who like to lord it over their fellows, are drawn to government and politics.

Some might ask: “Aren’t you loyal to America?” and “How can you say these terrible things?” My response is, “Of course I’m loyal to America, but America is an idea, it’s not a place. At least not any longer…”

America was once unique among the world’s countries. Unfortunately that’s no longer the case. The idea is still unique, but the country no longer is.

I’ll go further than that. It’s said that you’re supposed to be loyal to your fellow Americans. Well, here’s a revelation. I have less in common with my average fellow American than I do with friends of mine in the Congo, or Argentina, or China. The reason is that I share values with my friends; we look at the world the same way, have the same worldview. But what do I have in common with my fellow Americans who live in the trailer parks, barrios, and ghettos? Or even Hollywood, Washington, and Manhattan? Everyone has to be judged as an individual, but probably very little besides residing in the same political jurisdiction. Most of them—about 50% of the US—are welfare recipients, and therefore an active threat. So I have more personal loyalty to the guys in the Congo than I do to most of my fellow Americans. The fact we carry US passports is simply an accident of birth.

Those who find that thought offensive likely suffer from a psychological aberration called “nationalism”; in serious cases it may become “jingoism.” The authorities and the general public prefer to call it “patriotism.” It’s understandable, though. Everyone, including the North Koreans, tends to identify with the place they were born. But these things should be fairly low on any list of virtues. Nationalism is the belief that my country is the best country in the world just because I happen to have been born there. It’s most virulent during wars and elections. And it’s very scary. It’s like watching a bunch of chimpanzees hooting and panting at another tribe of chimpanzees across the watering hole. I have no interest in being a part of the charade—although that’s dangerous.

And getting more dangerous as the State grows more powerful. The growth of the State is actually destroying society. Over the last 100 years the State has grown at an exponential rate, and it’s the enemy of the individual. I see no reason why this trend, which has been in motion and accelerating for so long, is going to stop. And certainly no reason why it’s going to reverse.

It’s like a giant snowball that’s been rolling downhill from the top of the mountain. It could have been stopped early in its descent, but now the thing is a behemoth. If you stand in its way you’ll get crushed. It will stop only when it smashes the village at the bottom of the valley.

This makes me quite pessimistic about the future of freedom in the US. As I said, it’s been in a downtrend for many decades. But the events of September 11, 2001, turbocharged the acceleration of the loss of liberty in the US. At some point either foreign or domestic enemies will cause another 9/11, either real or imagined. It’s predictable; that’s what sociopaths, which I discussed earlier, do.

When there is another 9/11—and we will have another one—they’re going to lock down this country like one of their numerous new prisons. I was afraid that the shooting deaths and injuries of several hundred people in Las Vegas on October 1st might be it. But, strangely, the news cycle has driven on, leaving scores of serious unanswered questions in its wake. And about zero public concern.

It’s going to become very unpleasant in the US at some point soon. It seems to me the inevitable is becoming imminent.


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Trump: Syria Attack "Could Take Place Very Soon Or Not So Soon At All"

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-12/trump-syria-attack-could-take-place-very-soon-or-not-so-soon-all

Having likely taken a lot of heat from none other than his chief of staff Gen. Kelly for his Wednesday morning tweet in which he rather explicitly revealed US military plans, stating that "Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia,  because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!", president Trump is backtracking this morning, and in his third tweet of the morning (after commenting on Robert Mueller and the "failing New York Times", and commending California Gov. Jerry Brown for sending the national guard to the border) Trump said that he never really said what he said. To wit:

"Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all! In any event, the United States, under my Administration, has done a great job of ridding the region of ISIS. Where is our “Thank you America?”

From the comments:

Adolph.H.  Haus-Targaryen Thu, 04/12/2018 - 06:48 Permalink

Are they panicking because of British forces captured by the Syrian army in Ghouta (and now detained in a place neither the Americans nor the brits know of, so cannot bomb)?

https://sputniknews.com/military/201804121063460158-british-forces-syri

I'll be waiting for them to appear on television any day. That would be grandiose.

And Putin somehow convinced Netanyahu not to intervene in Syria:

https://srbin.info/2018/04/11/putin-izrealskom-premijeru-njetanjahuu-ne

----

It's okay not to be a Jew.

In reply to Its 74-dimension chess. … by Haus-Targaryen

Adolph.H. Thu, 04/12/2018 - 06:48 Permalink

Trump has just hung May out to dry!  She wants a strike asap (there is some embarrassing stuff in Ghouta, which is now back under SAA control) - she planned to get a quick strike in now and then have a debate in parliament next week.  Corbyn is demanding a debate before any action - he knows parliament will not support it (just like Cameron failed to get the go ahead).  She just ends up looking more incompetent whatever happens!

Edit: thanks Adolph for posting the link - I was just looking that up!  It was the capture of those special forces and Putin's refusal to deal that caused the Skripal case in the first place!

Syrian Army Captures British Militants in Eastern Ghouta – Reports

https://sputniknews.com/military/201804121063460158-british-forces-syria-ghouta/

A number of British forces have been captured by the Syrian army during military operations in Eastern Ghouta, according to reports by local media.

According to a report by Al-Mayadeen news channel cited by Fars News, a number of British troops have been captured during the Syrian Arab Army's operations in Eastern Ghouta. 

They are believed to be a part of international military forces deployed in the region to launch a ground assault in Damascus in cooperation with the US. According to the report, the US and other NATO countries, Jordan and Israel planned to launch attacks from several fronts, but the plot failed as Syrian armed forces made a series of rapid advances in Eastern Ghouta in March. The plot allegedly involved massive airstrikes by US and Israeli planes that were supposed to pave the way for ground forces.

"After the plot was disclosed, the Syrian-Russian military commanders started operations in Eastern Ghouta to repel it," the sources cited by Al-Mayadeen and Fars said.

Since the plot failed due to rapid advances by the Syrian army, the US cancelled all operations planned for these foreign forces and ordered an immediate withdrawal from Eastern Ghouta through the eastern suburbs of Damascus, including Douma.

The US and Turkey sought to rescue foreign "militants and agents operating for Israel, Jordan and NATO," now trapped in Ghouta, and move them to Idlib, the source says.

The Turkish initiative to help with the evacuation of Nusra Front terrorists from Ghouta has reportedly been a coverup for "special foreign forces that were among the ranks of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated" Nusra front terror organization.

"Therefore, the US has ordered Jaysh al-Islam, Faylaq al-Rahman and other terrorist groups to allow the evacuation of civilians from Eastern Ghouta to army-held regions in a bid to provide the ground for these foreign agents to also leave Ghouta in disguise and enable the Turkish intelligence service to send them to specified regions in At-Tanf and northern Syria which are under the control of US troops," the source said.

BREAKING: Germany Will Not Join Bombing Campaign in Syria - Chancellor Merkel

https://sputniknews.com/world/201804121063479088-germany-syria-strikes-merkel/

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on April 12 that a range of measures must be considered to tackle the crisis in Syria, but German forces will not attack the Syrian Army or other government forces.

She also said that "it is important to show unity on Syria" and warned that it's "obvious" the Syrian government has not destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical weapons, as it agreed to do in 2013.

"Germany will not take part in possible military action — I want to make clear again that there are no decisions — but we see, and support this, that everything is being done to send a signal that this use of chemical weapons is not acceptable."

Fears of a US attack against Syria were stoked after US President Donald Trump warned that "smart" missiles would be fired at the country in retaliation to an alleged chemical attack in the city of Douma over the weekend, which was quickly blamed on President Bashar al-Assad's government, despite there being no evidence implicating government forces.

Although the US acted alone last year, with a guided-missile destroyer firing dozens of tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase in Homs province, it seems Trump is attempting to assemble a military coalition to potentially launch a widescale military campaign against Syrian government forces.

Germany’s unwillingness to take part in such a campaign deals a blow to Trump’s plan to launch a concerted war effort against Damascus. The UK and France have emerged as the most likely candidates for such an anti-Assad military coalition with the US.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May is under pressure to call a parliamentary vote before launching military action, but is not legally obliged to do so.


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A Brief History of Chemical War

https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/magazine/a-brief-history-of-chemical-war

A substantial piece on Porton Down included in this article.

Iraq Report Show US And Germany Supplied WMD To Iraq

http://rense.com/general32/supp.htm

Iraq's 11,000-page report to the UN Security Council lists 150 foreign companies, including some from America, Britain, Germany and France, that supported Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programme, a German newspaper said yesterday.
 
Berlin's left-wing Die Tageszeitung newspaper said it had seen a copy of the original Iraqi dossier which was vetted for sensitive information by US officials before being handed to the five permanent Security Council members two weeks ago. An edited version was passed to the remaining 10 members of the Security Council last night.
 
British officials said the list of companies appeared to be accurate. Eighty German firms and 24 US companies are reported to have supplied Iraq with equipment and know-how for its weapons programmes from 1975 onwards and in some cases support for Baghdad's conventional arms programme had continued until last year.

Original Telegraph link is broken but maybe the waybackmachine has got it ?

Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/15/defector-admits-wmd-lies-iraq-war

• Man codenamed Curveball 'invented' tales of bioweapons
• Iraqi told lies to try to bring down Saddam Hussein regime
Fabrications used by US as justification for invasion

Both Russia and Syria have OPCW confirmation that their chemical weapons ability has been destroyed and dismantled. The Western "countries" to my knowledge still possess and develop active chemical weapons programs and hold large stockpiles.. who controls the terrorist proxies in the Syrian theatre ? Do the math..


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UK Government Not Fit for Purpose

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201804091063375324-uk-government-not-fit-purpose/

Jon Gaunt

Let’s be frank this lousy Conservative Government is not fit for purpose and it’s a good job that they have the Salisbury Nerve Gas pantomime to divert the UK population’s attention, otherwise, I am sure that people would be taking to the streets.

The charge sheet includes amongst others: the betrayal over Brexit, the murder epidemic in London, the Police Cuts, the scandal over the Men child false refugees, and the Pakistani Rape gangs that seem to have been allowed to rape and sexually abuse almost at will right across the UK.

Whilst it is clear to the man and the woman in the street why these problems are happening we keep getting subjected a procession of Government Ministers who are either stupid, delusional or plain liars.

This parade of fools is of course led by Boris, the bungler, Johnson who has taken us to the edge of a third world war by leading the accusations against Russia without first gathering the evidence.
If it was an Easter miracle that Yulia Skripal recovered then it is quite honestly astonishing that her father is too now on the mend from a nerve agent that we were told that was so deadly that just a single drop would kill.

I am not going to go over the narrative that the Government and their patsies in the MSM have spread but it is quite clear now false.

The Skripal’s may well have come back from the dead but meanwhile, the death toll in London appears to increase every day.

On Sunday we had to endure, Communities Minister, Sajid Javid telling us the escalating murder rate was not due to 20 thousand Police cuts?!

Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, (or should that be Rudderless?) backed him up and promised, in an article in the Sunday Telegraph, that she was launching an initiative on Monday to combat this knife and gun mayhem.

I wondered yesterday whether their reluctance to acknowledge the impact of the loss of 20 thousand Police jobs could have anything to do with protecting the previous useless Home Secretary who so aggressively implemented the cuts?
Who could that be?

Why Theresa May that’s who? Yes, the same Theresa who seems to have gone missing these past two weeks as London burned and the Skripal fiasco got more and more curious. One would have thought that our Prime Minister would have rushed back to London, but no she decided instead to carry on with her walking holiday.

Meanwhile, today’s launch of Amber Rudd’s initiative to halt the murders was however somewhat undermined by the leaking overnight of a report which clearly laid the blame on Police cuts.

“Rudderless”, only had one defence when it was revealed that the leaked document was from her own department, she had to take the ignorance is bliss tactic and claim she had not seen the report that her own Government department had researched and published?!

The nickname, Rudderless now seems even apter.

As for the actual initiative it was basically a case of everyone else is to blame: from Rap and Grime music to YouTube and social media and the fact that everyone can buy cleaning fluid and knives.

Why do politicians always think the way to close down a problem is to restrict the freedoms and rights of the decent silent majority in favour of the feral, the feckless and dare I say it the foreigners.

Let’s face it, this is the elephant in the room in terms of this murder epidemic. You would have to be blind, deaf and dumb and pretty deluded if you did not recognize that the majority of these murderers and indeed the victims are black and of African descent.

It cannot and is not racist to point this out and we will never solve this problem if we tread on politically correct eggshells. I am not in a way suggesting that there are not members of our indigenous population who resort to violence but we have to face facts that unlimited, unfettered and largely un-vetted immigration has led to these problems.

But no Amber Rudderless would rather restrict my ability to buy a knife or some drain cleaning fluid than actually confront these communities and tell them some home truths.

Amber Rudd’s paper-thin proposal to tackle these crimes was further undermined today when it was revealed that two-thirds of the so-called “child” refugees were actually liars and over the age of 18.
Need I remind you that the Parson Green Tube bomber, Ahmed Hassan, who made a bomb on his foster parents’ kitchen table was one of these men-children. Do you also remember that every social justice warrior from JK Rowling through Gary Lineker to Lilly Allen told us we had a duty to take in and that if we objected and refused we were at best heartless intolerant bigots and at worse racists.

So now Mrs. May our glorious Leader is back, well she is in Stockholm actually, but never the less she has now rediscovered her voice. However, does she use it to assume control of the domestic agenda?  Does she hell as like, instead she is strutting the world stage like a Donald Trump “Mini Me” saying that “she will hold to account” those responsible for the chemical terror attack in Syria. I wonder if she will now be so vocal about the Israeli attack?

Regardless and at the risk of sounding like a little Englander, I would rather my Prime Minister was prioritizing the threat to my family’s security in the UK at this precise moment in time. As we all know, the first duty of any Government is and must be the protection of its citizens but May and this Government seem to have forgotten this.

Maybe that is why we have been subjected to this procession of deluded dullards spinning their yarns like out of control Comical Ali propagandists whilst Saint Theresa has been walking up mountains?
They know and she knows that actually the buck stops with her.

It was she, as Home Secretary, that cut the Police by 20 thousand, it was she who cut the Border Force and Immigration Service, it was on her watch that the “men” boys were allowed in to the country. Finally, it was on her watch that the Police had to blow away an armed man on the streets of London in the early hours of this morning.

This Government is clearly not fit for purpose and we need change.  But then I look at the alternative and I see Jeremy Corbyn as PM, John McDonnell as Chancellor and the “human calculator”, Diane Abbot as Home Secretary and I despair for my country’s future.

The views and opinions expressed by Jon Gaunt are those of the columnist and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.


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I have received 502 bad gateway on multiple devices while trying to access RT, they may be under cyber attack and trying to keep the site up. It does work, but intermittently.

US, UK & France starting 'precision strikes' in Syria – Trump

https://www.rt.com/usa/424088-trump-syria-strike-statement/

US President Donald Trump has approved military strikes in Syria in retaliation for the alleged chemical attack by the Assad government in Douma, near Damascus, last week.
"A short time ago, I ordered the United States Armed Forces to launch precision strikes on targets associated with the chemical weapons capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad," Trump said in a televised address from the White House. He added that a combined military operation by the US, the UK and France is already underway in Syria.

READ MORE: Explosions heard in east Damascus after Trump announces Syria strikes – witnesses

The US-led intervention in Syria comes just hours before the UN’s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) experts were scheduled to visit the Damascus suburb of Douma on Saturday to determine whether chemical weapons had been used there last week.

Shortly after Trump's announcement, a statement from UK Prime Minister Theresa May said she had authorized British forces to conduct "coordinated and targeted strikes to degrade the Syrian regime's chemical weapons capability."

French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed that he ordered French forces to carry out a military action against Syria in coalition with the US and France. “The facts and the responsibility of the Syrian regime are beyond doubt,” he said in a statement issued by his office, accusing Damascus of crossing “a red line” set by France in May of last year.

Macron said that France’s response was “limited” and solely aimed at “the capabilities of the Syrian regime for the production and use of chemical weapons.”


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Sky News cut off the former commander of British Armed Forces Jonathan Shaw over Syria

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpdT79rm1ts&feature=youtu.be

Sky News cut off the former commander of British Armed Forces Jonathan Shaw in Iraq during Syria discussion


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Syria 'chemical attack' staged to provoke US airstrike, London pushed perpetrators – Russian MoD

https://www.rt.com/news/424047-russian-mod-syria-statement/

The Russian Defense Ministry has presented what it says is proof that the reported chemical weapons attack in Syria was staged. It also accused the British government of pressuring the perpetrators to speed up the “provocation.”

During a briefing on Friday, the ministry showed interviews with two people, who, it said, are medical professionals working in the only hospital operating in Douma, a town near the Syrian capital, Damascus.

In the interviews released to the media, the two men reported how footage was shot of people dousing each other with water and treating children, which was claimed to show the aftermath of the April 7 chemical weapons attack. The patients shown in the video suffered from smoke poisoning and the water was poured on them by their relatives after a false claim that chemical weapons were used, the ministry said.

State Dept claims US has proof Damascus was behind Douma 'attack,' but it's classified

https://www.rt.com/usa/424086-syria-proof-classified-state-department/

The US State Department has claimed to have proof that the Syrian government was the perpetrator of an alleged chemical attack in Douma. It refused to make the evidence public, as the intelligence is "classified."
State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said on Friday that the US has "a very high level of confidence" that it was the Syrian government that launched an alleged chemical weapons attack on civilians in Douma on April 7. Asked by AP's Matt Lee if the US can say that it has clear evidence of the Syrian government's culpability, Nauert responded that while she cannot speak for other nations, "it's the assessment of the British government, the US government, the French government" that Syria was the culprit.

"I cannot speak on their behalf, but we've all have been having conversations and sharing information, intelligence included, and we can say that the Syrian government was behind the attack," Nauert said. The US assertion relies on "different kind of sources," including those of its own, she said.

It's unclear if the strongest-worded attribution of blame by the US so far is based on some newly uncovered evidence. Pressed on whether Washington had obtained some new proof that explicitly points at Damascus' role in the incident, Nauert did not provide any new details, saying that she is not in a position to divulge the intelligence data.

She went on to criticize "some TV shows" that are calling on the White House to offer some facts in support of the accusations: "a lot of this stuff is classified at this point. We are unable to provide all of this publicly at this moment," she said.


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Strike on Syria won't remain without consequences – Russian ambassador to US

https://www.rt.com/news/424094-syria-strike-consequences-antonov/

The Russian Ambassador to the US has warned of "consequences" after the US and its allies launched a coordinated military action against Syria.
Russia feels threatened by the US decision to strike Syrian targets in retaliation for the alleged chemical attack in Douma on April 7, which Moscow believes was staged.

"A pre-designed scenario is being implemented. Again, we are being threatened. We warned that such actions will not be left without consequences," Anatoly Antonov said in a statement on Friday night. "All responsibility for them rests with Washington, London and Paris."


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Trump Orders Syrian Military Strikes, 3 Waves Of Airstrikes Launched At Various Targets

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-13/watch-live-president-trump-expected-announce-military-strikes-syria-tonight

Update 6:  Russia responds. Here is the full statement posted by Russia's ambassador to the US, Anataoly Antonov:

"The worst apprehensions have come true. Our warnings have been left unheard.

A pre-designed scenario is being implemented. Again, we are being threatened. We warned that such actions will not be left without consequences.

All responsibility for them rests with Washington, London and Paris.

Insulting the President of Russia is unacceptable and inadmissible.

The U.S. – the possessor of the biggest arsenal of chemical weapons – has no moral right to blame other countries."


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5 things you should know about US-led 'one-time' strikes on Syria

https://www.rt.com/news/424120-us-strike-syria-facts/

Multiple targets in Syria were bombarded by the US, UK, and France in retaliation to what they said was an Assad-orchestrated chemical attack near Damascus. Here are the main facts about the intervention.
Washington approved "precision strikes" against Syria early on Saturday, alongside British and French forces that also took part in the bombing. Shortly after US President Donald Trump announced the bombardment, reports began surfacing of explosions in Damascus.

Syrian air defense units were scrambled to thwart the aerial invasion, intercepting 71 out of 103 of the missiles, the Russian Ministry of Defense said. Now, as Syria deals with the aftermath of the early morning airstrikes, we look at five major things you should know about the American-British-French attack.

What did they target?

One of the strikes targeted a scientific compound in Barzeh in the vicinity of Damascus, which the coalition claimed was involved in the production of chemical and biological weapons. The Syrian government said the bombing destroyed an education center and scientific laboratories, but resulted in no casualties.

The UK Defense Ministry said four Royal Air Force Tornado GR4s launched Storm Shadow missiles at what the UK military claims was a former missile base, 15 miles west of Homs. The ministry claimed that the Syrian government kept a stockpile of chemical weapons precursors at the site.

Twelve cruise missiles targeted Al-Dumayr air base east of Damascus, according to the Russian military. The Syrians used Soviet-made S-120, S-200 and Buk-type anti-aircraft systems, claiming to have intercepted all the missiles.

What weapons were used?

The US did not specify the types of weapons deployed in the strikes, but it did use Tomahawk cruise missiles in last year's bombing of Syria's Shayrat air base. US Defense Secretary James Mattis said more than twice as many weapons were fired as in April 2017, adding "it was a heavy strike."

The Russian Defense Ministry said the US and its two allies deployed combat aircraft and warships to launch over 100 cruise missiles and air-to-surface missiles on Syrian civil and military facilities. The strikes, it said, were conducted by two US ships traversing the Red Sea, adding that the coalition also deployed B-1 Lancer strategic bombers and arranged tactical air support in the airspace over the Mediterranean.

Social media & 'classified' intel: Pretext for the intervention

The timing of the American-British-French attack is noteworthy. It came just hours before the UN's Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) experts were set to visit the Damascus suburb of Douma on Saturday to establish whether chemical weapons had been used there last week.

Announcing the strikes, the White House said it has a large body of "reliable intelligence" as well as "social media users, non-governmental organizations, and other open-source outlets," which implicate the Syrian government in the alleged Douma attack. Washington also referred to the questionable claims that "the Syrian regime has repeatedly used chemical weapons to compensate for its lack of military manpower."

Earlier, the US State Department claimed to have proof that the Syrian government was behind the alleged chemical attack in Douma. However, it refused to make the intelligence public, as "a lot of this stuff is classified at this point." Moscow repeatedly dismissed the claims, saying the chemical weapon attack was orchestrated. The Russian military previously warned of a "provocation" involving chemical weapons being planned by militants.

How did the Syrians respond?

Syrian air defenses did all they could to protect the country. Ruptly footage has emerged showing Syria's surface-to-air missiles responding to the attack. Russian military said later Syrian air defense units downed 71 out of 103 cruise missiles launched by US and its allies.

Damascus harshly condemned the bombing, saying it will never bow to the West's attacks on its sovereignty. Syria's UN envoy, Bashar Jaafari, accused the US, UK, and France of blatantly violating the UN Charter. "I would clarify here that the history of these three states is built on using lies and fabricated stories to wage wars in order to occupy states, seize their resources, and change governments in them by force," he said, as cited by Syria's SANA news agency.

Russia warns of consequences

While none of the cruise missiles launched by the US and its allies reached the Russian air defense zones, the strikes sparked outrage in Moscow.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the US-led strikes hit a war-ravaged country "that has been trying to survive terrorist aggression for many years." In a statement posted on Facebook, she compared the invasion to the start of the 2003 Iraq War, which was based on claims that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction.

The defense ministry said the Russian forces did not deploy their air defense systems stationed in Syria to intercept the American, British, and French missiles. For its part, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford said the Pentagon "specifically identified targets" to "mitigate the risk of Russian forces being involved." The coalition did contact their Russian counterparts to "deconflict airspace," but did not "coordinate targets" with Moscow.


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Goal of Syria strikes was to prevent chemical watchdog's fact-finding mission in Douma – Moscow

https://www.rt.com/news/424135-syria-strike-prevent-opcw-mission/

The US and its allies attacked Syria in order to hamper the work of the OPCW inspectors, investigating the alleged chemical attack in Douma, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
The “intimidation act” by the US, UK, and France was carried out “under an absolutely far-fetched pretext of the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian authorities in the Damascus suburb of Douma on April 7,” the ministry said in a statement.

The airstrikes were carried out hours before inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were to start their fact-finding mission at the site. “There’s every reason to believe that the purpose of the attack on Syria was to obstruct the work of the OPCW inspectors,” the statement read.

Moscow pointed out that the Western allies ignored evidence provided by Syria and Russia that the alleged chemical attack was actually staged in a “cynical” manner.

“The aggression was undertaken at a time when the Syrian troops are continuing their successful offensive against IS [Islamic State, formerly ISIS], Jabhat al-Nusra, and other terrorist groups. All facts point to the desire of the US and its allies to provide the radicals and extremists with an opportunity to gather their breath, restore their ranks, drag out the bloodshed on Syrian soil and thereby complicate the political settlement,” the ministry said.

Syria airstrikes will not deter chemical weapons inspectors – OPCW

https://www.rt.com/news/424140-opcw-syria-chemical-inspection/

A fact-finding mission by the UN’s chemical weapons watchdog will continue in Syria despite airstrikes carried out on the country hours earlier by the US, UK, and France.
Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are in the country to investigate the circumstances surrounding reports of a gas attack in the Syrian city of Douma, where at least 70 people are reported to have died from chemical exposure. Syria and Russia called for an OPCW inquiry into the claims.

The agency, set up to ensure the destruction of chemical armaments, is due to assess the scene and take samples from alleged attack victims to determine the cause and potentially uncover the perpetrators.

The OPCW, whose members include Syria, Russia, the UK, France, and Russia, issued a statement on Saturday saying the investigation into the alleged use of illegal chemical weapons will continue.

The statement comes after a night of bombing, which saw US, French, and British forces launch missiles at sites including a military facility outside Homs and a suspected research center in the capital, Damascus. Both Russia and Syria have condemned the airstrikes as a breach of international law, and insist that Assad forces did not deploy chemical weapons.

OPCW officials have carried out similar chemical checks in Syria. In 2017, the organization found that sarin or a sarin-like substance was used in the town of Khan Shaykhun, but did not undertake an on-the-ground inspection of the site.

Evidence put forward in the agency’s report revealed the gas was most likely released to the north of the settlement. However, it did not attribute blame to the April 2017 attack, which was carried out in an area not controlled by the government of the Syrian Arab Republic at the time.


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Striking Syria: The true face of humanitarian imperialism

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/424145-syria-strike-humanitarian-imperialism/

Coordinated military strikes by the US, France and the UK against Syrian government installations as punishment for President Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons have deepened the quagmire instead of deterring war crimes.
US President Donald Trump’s claims that the Western attacks represent “righteous power against barbarism and brutality” of the Assad regime, and that he is prepared to “sustain this response” until Assad stops gassing his own people, shroud the strategic and geopolitical calculations driving the Western agenda in the long-drawn-out Syrian war.

The garb of morality cloaks the reality that Washington and its allies have lost the ground war in Syria and are seeking to maintain their relevance as stakeholders by invoking humanitarian pretexts.

Since the Syrian conflict began in 2011, the US and its regional partners such as Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar and Turkey have financed and armed a variety of anti-Assad rebel groups that are now marginalized due to a tenacious counter-insurgency pushback by the Syrian state and its two principal external backers— Russia and Iran.

Much to the chagrin of strategists in Washington, Riyadh and Tel Aviv, jihadist as well as relatively secular Sunni insurgent movements like Al-Nusra Front, Jaysh-al-Islam, Ahrar-al-Sham and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have been routed. Some of these terrorists are as obnoxious and vicious as Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), but they got branded as ‘moderate’ by the US and its allies because they served as Western proxies against Shiite Iran.

Repeated charges of chemical weapons usage by Assad and accompanying shocking video footage and photographs emanate from these Western proxies, which believe that they can avoid being totally vanquished if US-led offensives keep the Syrian state weak and uncertain about its future.

Although previous investigations by United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have blamed both the Assad regime and its jihadist foes for abominable usage of weapons of mass destruction, the drumbeat from Western intelligence and news media is against the Syrian government as the sole and main culprit. Such a cynical and selective humanitarianism is the product of realpolitik, wherein atrocities committed by Western allies are shoved under the carpet while those attributed to their antagonists are painted as unconscionable crimes which must be prevented through Western military intervention.

When a politician like Trump opportunistically cites human rights concerns as his motivation to launch missile attacks, it must be taken with a grain of salt. The US president has displayed a remarkable comfort level with several violent regimes and has praised their actions if they enable American vested interests. His foreign policy ideology is the antithesis of ‘liberal’ and he does not care two hoots for saving the lives of non-Americans.

What Trump does care about, or at least his hawkish advisers in the security establishment do, is the US’ prestige as a hegemon whose credibility rests on periodic shows of military superiority. In Syria and Iraq, although the stated goal of the American military presence is to root out IS and other terrorists, Washington’s ultimate objective is to hunker down and establish a permanent presence in the pivotal Levant region. The desire to stay put is rationalized by military planners in the US as a necessary measure to ‘stabilize’ Syria and Iraq, which is a code for preventing what they fear is an Iranian-Russian takeover of control of the Levant.

The dissimulation ploy of American strategic elites is to say that their troops must remain to clean up the remnants of IS and keep the area safe from a resurgence of jihadism. But what they want is a fait accompli on the ground to guarantee Israel and Saudi Arabia against Iranian and Russian expansion. The recent plea from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman to Trump not to hastily exit the US military from Syria uncovers the true motivation. Chemical attack accusations amid the fog of a war full of impunity help to burnish this pre-decided plan that the US and its allies should not ‘abandon’ Syria.

As a populist and contrarian politician who lacks a grand strategic vision, Trump has a contradictory instinct to pull out the 2,000-odd American forces from Syria. Hence his preference for one-off demonstrations of US military might without sinking into a morass through a broader campaign to overthrow Assad. Yet, conveniently-timed chemical attacks whose occurrence and authorship are murky are tipping his hand into acquiescing in a longer-term American military presence in Syria.

Sadly, sporadic and dubiously justified US and allied airstrikes on selected Syrian targets have not and will not reduce the suffering of the Syrian people. Trump’s resort to the airstrike option whenever there is a hue and cry about chemical attacks reveals how limited his leverage is in dictating a final settlement and overall end to the war. Despite his macho threat to Russia to “get ready” to face “nice, new and smart” missiles, President Putin remains the entrenched kingmaker in Syria. And as long as he is in the driver’s seat, the US’ ‘humanitarian’ bombing raids will continue under one ruse or another.

The ‘sustained’ reaction to chemical attacks that Trump is warning of will be implemented until the US can alter the balance of power in Syria, if not fully in its favor, then at least partially.

The frenzied narrative surrounding chemical warfare is thus an illustration of a frustrated America desperately attempting to retain some skin in the game. This is the supreme tragedy of Syria, where Western humanitarian imperialism is a smokescreen for ruthless power play.

Dr. Sreeram Chaulia is Professor and Dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs in Sonipat, India. His latest book is ‘Modi Doctrine: The Foreign Policy of India’s Prime Minister’.

Excellent synopsis of the situation Dr. Chaulia!


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And the plot thickens..

Lavrov: Swiss lab says ‘BZ toxin’ used in Salisbury, not produced in Russia, was in US & UK service

https://www.rt.com/news/424149-skripal-poisoning-bz-lavrov/

The substance used on Sergei Skripal was an agent called BZ, according to Swiss state Spiez lab, the Russian foreign minister said. The toxin was never produced in Russia, but was in service in the US, UK, and other NATO states.

Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with an incapacitating toxin known as 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate or BZ, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, citing the results of the examination conducted by a Swiss chemical lab that worked with the samples that London handed over to the Organisation for the Prohibition of the Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The Swiss center sent the results to the OPCW. However, the UN chemical watchdog limited itself only to confirming the formula of the substance used to poison the Skripals in its final report without mentioning anything about the other facts presented in the Swiss document, the Russian foreign minister added. He went on to say that Moscow would ask the OPCW about its decision to not include any other information provided by the Swiss in its report.

Lavrov said that the Swiss center that assessed the samples is actually the Spiez Laboratory. This facility is a Swiss state research center controlled by the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Protection and, ultimately, by the country’s defense minister. The lab is also an internationally recognized center of excellence in the field of the nuclear, biological, and chemical protection and is one of the five centers permanently authorized by the OPCW.

The Russian foreign minister said that London refused to answer dozens of “very specific” questions asked by Moscow about the Salisbury case, as well as to provide any substantial evidence that could shed light on the incident. Instead, the UK accused Russia of failing to answer its own questions, he said, adding that, in fact, London did not ask any questions but wanted Moscow to admit that it was responsible for the delivery of the chemical agent to the UK.

The scandal erupted in early March, when former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found in critical condition in the town of Salisbury. Top UK officials almost immediately pinned the blame on Russia.

Moscow believes that the entire Skripal case lacks transparency and that the UK is in fact not interested in an independent inquiry. "We get the impression that the British government is deliberately pursuing the policy of destroying all possible evidence, classifying all remaining materials and making a transparent investigation impossible," the Russian ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, said during a press conference on Friday.


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And the plot thickens..

Lavrov: Swiss lab says ‘BZ toxin’ used in Salisbury, not produced in Russia, was in US & UK service

The BBC will be all over this breaking news and dispatching teams of journalists to investigate this claim, reporting back to the public impartially and with urgency considering the magnitude of the situation.. won't they ?

Learn how the BBC is working to strengthen trust and transparency in online news

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/help-41670342

8 December 2017

The BBC is recognised by audiences in the UK and around the world as a provider of news that you can trust. Our website, like our TV and radio services, strives for journalism that is accurate, impartial, independent and fair.

Our editorial values say: "The trust that our audience has in all our content underpins everything that we do. We are independent, impartial and honest. We are committed to achieving the highest standards of accuracy and impartiality and strive to avoid knowingly or materially misleading our audiences.

"Our commitment to impartiality is at the heart of that relationship of trust. In all our output we will treat every subject with an impartiality that reflects the full range of views. We will consider all the relevant facts fairly and with an open mind."

Research shows that, compared to other broadcasters, newspapers and online sites, the BBC is seen as by far the most trusted and impartial news provider in the UK.

Even so, we know that identifying credible journalism on the internet can be a confusing experience. We also know that audiences want to understand more about how BBC journalism is produced.

For these reasons, BBC News is making even greater efforts to explain what type of information you are reading or watching on our website, who and where the information is coming from, and how a story was crafted the way it was. By doing so, we can help you judge for yourself why BBC News can be trusted.

We are also making these indicators of trustworthy journalism "machine-readable", meaning that they can be picked up by search engines and social media platforms, helping them to better identify reliable sources of information too.


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I was listening to the radio earlier and the news came on, it was a piece on Syria. The news reader stated that 40 people had been killed in the chemical attack at Douma, this was not prefaced with any outs such as "allegedly" or "highly likely" but was stated as an absolute fact.

So.. Chemical weapons do not vaporise human bodies, fact number 1.

When a human dies the body is left in position until acted on by an outside force, fact number 2.

This means that the OPCW investigation team that have arrived on the ground in Douma, undeterred by the illegal and hasty missile strike of the US, UK, and France, will be able to verify that there are 40 dead bodies and may be able to tell the cause of death, stated to be by a chemical weapon.

If approximately 40 bodies are not found on location either the bodies have been moved and spirited away, or the news reader was telling an outright lie to the public, and no attack resulting in the death of 40 people actually occurred at all.


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Ask yourselves: Are we the bad guys?

http://thesaker.is/ask-yourselves-are-we-the-bad-guys/

by R.Lesnoix for The Saker blog

One can fault the British for many things but not for their sense of humour. Some time ago I saw a sketch by the comedy duo Mitchell and Webb. They played two German soldiers, sitting in a fortified position at the front, enjoying the relative quiet of the moment. They were dressed in SS uniforms. In that typically British roundabout way of starting an awkward conversation one of them begins to talk about their uniforms. He has noticed something odd, something off-kilter. Their uniforms have skulls on them. So he asks the other one why that would be. In the following discussion they try to come up with positive associations with skulls. They try to find a valid reason why their uniforms would have skulls on them. When they fail to do so and can only come up with negative associations the first one looks the other in the eye and asks hesitantly “Are we the bad guys?”

It’s a funny sketch partly because with our knowledge and morality of today the idea of two SS-men wondering if they are the bad guys is almost grotesque. Off course they are the bad guys. “How could they not have known they were the bad guys?” Many will have this thought flash through their minds in some way or other. It is generally posed as a rhetorical question as it’s so obvious it requires no further deliberation. That is a mistake though. It’s a very serious question. It needs exploring because it goes to the root of why good men are capable of doing, or supporting, great evil. So let’s explore it. Why didn’t the Germans consider themselves to be the bad guys?

Let’s start with the skulls. Putting skulls on uniforms wasn’t unique to the SS. It had a long tradition in the German army and before that in the Prussian army. It was used by the hussars for example on their hats. One likely reason the SS used it was to tap into this history, to present themselves not as something completely new but as a new way of continuing old German traditions or if you like as one of different ways they tried to legitimize themselves as part of German society. Keep this trick of trying to look like something you’re not in mind. Nor were the Germans the only ones to use it, nor was it a purely military thing. If the skulls alone denote ‘evil’ what does that say of the Skull and Bones society which has many of Americas elite, even former presidents, among its members? Skulls have had many symbolic meanings throughout human history. Judging historical use with a narrow contemporary view will lead to wrong conclusions. So no, the presence of skulls on their uniform was not a dead give-away of being ‘the’ bad guys. Unfortunately this simplistic view, especially judging the ‘other’ with ones own limited viewpoint, is commonplace. Point to one very specific aspect that is easily identifiable as ‘bad’ from your point of view, ignoring context, and presto. You have your bad guys. Given that we are conditioned to view the world in absolutes that also gives you your good guys. If one side is bad, the other must be good.

For Germans in the 1930’s it was far from obvious they were the bad guys. They had lost the first world war, a war they felt was forced upon them by other countries. They had requested an armistice, believed they were promised a fair settlement and were then betrayed at Versailles. Some, maybe most, believed that the war was not lost at the front by the army but back home by spineless politicians. Hadn’t the army defeated the Russians on the eastern front after all? Germany lost significant parts of what it considered to be its ‘Heimat’ permanently while other parts were occupied by the allies. The exorbitant reparations they were forced to pay drove the country into economic misery. In other words, Germans largely felt themselves to be the victims of injustice. They felt robbed, they felt threatened, they felt betrayed, they felt wronged. So when someone came along who helped make things right, off course they went along. The economy improved, unemployment went down, political stability returned, the army was strengthened, lost parts of the ‘Heimat’ were regained and a settlement with the Soviets was arranged. From their point of view these were good things, worthy achievements even if it came with rough edges. When world war two broke out, it’s also easy to imagine this was seen as a reaction of the western powers to the resurgence of Germany as a continental power. It was just a new phase in a centuries old political game. This time though, the manner in which the conflict played out was much, much darker as civilians became the target in very direct ways. I’ll leave the rest of what happened for what it is. You all know the story.

When it finally ended Germans were, collectively, blamed for the crimes and misdeeds of their government. For most of them these came as a shock. Some were in denial and refused to accept them as true. Most accepted them though, especially when the stories of the average soldiers who had served on the eastern front or as occupation troops became more widespread. Given what they had seen and done, the camps didn’t seem that farfetched. While some argued over the details of what happened there and over exact numbers, and some still do, there’s no doubt of the brutality and wide scale murder that took place. The treatment of ordinary Soviet citizens and Soviet prisoners of war alone are testament to the evil nature of the Nazi regime. Note that this does not mean that their opponents were pure as snow. Whatever the misdeeds and crimes committed by the allies and Soviets, these do not justify or excuse what the Germans did in any way. It did make it easier though to see them as the bad guys and by inference, themselves as the good guys.

The Germans argued they hadn’t known what had been going on, other Germans were to blame, ‘Wir haben es nicht gewusst’. But looking at the scale of what happened we wonder how they could not have known. There were plenty of signs, plenty of proof in plain sight, not to mention all the public rhetoric their leaders had used. How could they not realize what was happening? How could they not know the murderous nature of their state? The counterargument against the German people can be paraphrased as ‘you could have known and you should have known’ combined with ‘looking away from what is happening in order not to see it does not absolve you of guilt.’ And truth be told, after the war the German people did carry this guilt collectively. They did realize how wrong they had been. But they also struggled with the question of how this had crept up upon them. How could they have been so blind? Individuals who had always thought of themselves as good people had somehow been led astray and had become more than just bad guys, they had supported and facilitated evil. And that question is crucial. If it could happen to the Germans, it can happen to others too. As Herman Goring said, “you don’t need the support of a majority of the population, you only need about 5% of them behind you as long as it’s the right 5%.” Does that sound familiar to anyone?

It’s easy to point fingers at a few guilty individuals but ultimately it takes a state with all its trappings to commit atrocities on this scale. And it wasn’t just the Germans who got caught up in this. Just look at how easily and seamlessly local authorities in conquered countries cooperated with the occupation authorities. Local police enforced German policies without much resistance. They cooperated to combat resistance groups and to arrest whomever the Germans wanted. People tend to have a natural inclination to follow institutionalized authority without questioning its moral legitimacy. Its moral legitimacy is assumed as nearly all people consider themselves to be, individually and collectively, the good guys, irrespective of the specific collective used to identify with. Given that we all are members of different collectives at any given time, it’s easy to use, consciously or subconsciously, a collective whose moral authority is obvious to ourselves. We then confuse the self-image we have of our morality with the morality of the institutions that rule our daily life.

Many in the western world identify as Christians for example and the Christian creed and morality is beyond doubt for them. So it becomes easy to say to one self ‘as Christians we have the moral high ground so obviously we (our institutions/governments) are the good guys’. In the west we also consider ourselves to be democracies and we elevate this onto the highest of pedestals ‘we are democracies, the most righteous form of government and therefor we hold the moral high ground so obviously we (our institutions/governments) are the good guys’. Even more abstract is the notion that we, in the west, are ‘free’ and therefor have the moral authority over those countries where ‘the people’ are ‘not free’. We believe that gives us the moral high ground so obviously we (our institutions/governments) are the good guys. We have become moral Pavlov-dogs. Dangle a so-called noble cause in front of us and any action, any action, undertaken by us (our institutions/governments) instantly becomes justified no matter what the morality of that action itself actually is. We have killed, directly or indirectly, children not by the hundreds, not by the thousands, not by the tens of thousands but by the hundreds of thousands over the last few decades in order to make the world ‘free’ and ‘safe for democracy’. Somehow that’s okay with us. But when our own government tells us Assad killed some children with chemical weapons (cue Pavlov-reaction) no proof is required and we accept ‘something’ must be done. Why? Because we (our institutions/governments) are the good guys and we’ve been conditioned to think that the good guys don’t lie. Despite all the lies we’ve witnessed we still think of them as incidents, not as the rule. It’s always individuals that lied or did wrong. ‘Tony Blair lied the UK into the Iraq war’. No, everyone did. The whole system is corrupted, not just individuals in it. The system rules and changes the individuals, not the other way around. We justify our belief in our authorities by saying that if it wasn’t true ‘someone’ would speak up. Lies that big can’t hold up. But when people do speak up we ignore or ridicule them, calling them conspiracy nuts. And a suspiciously large number of them have car accidents, commit suicide, are on planes that crash, suddenly get cancer or are the victim of robberies gone wrong. The scale of our self-delusion is mind-boggling.

For the Germans during and before world war two a similar association took hold. They felt they had been wronged in many ways after the first world war and that as the victims of that war they were only trying to make right those wrongs. So to them the moral authority obviously belonged to them no matter what they (their institutions/government) did. They saw themselves as the good guys. Period. At most they recognized some rough edges but not enough to question the moral authority of what they (their institutions/government) were doing. Latch on to one belief of absolute moral authority and the gates to mass-murder and atrocities are wide open. Machiavelli’s best known observation is the mechanism of ‘the goal justifies the means’ as a political tool. This also applies to morality. If people are convinced of their own moral superiority they stop questioning their actions. Any action is allowed. But moral authority never rests with just belief or creed or conviction. It is not absolute, it is not unquestionable. Ones morality is determined by ones actions and by ones inactions, not by belief. Remember, looking away in order not to be confronted by unpleasant realities is not a valid excuse to claim innocence. Not acting is a moral choice too. Not questioning your assumptions is also a moral choice. ‘God is on our side’ or its equivalent has been uttered by just about every side in a war at some point even when the warring sides were of the exact same religion. Now looking back that looks as absurd as two members of the SS wondering if they are the bad guys. But when you don’t question moral authority, when you simply assume it then both of these make complete sense.

Which begs the question, how will people in the future look back at us and our historical era? I am a citizen of one the western countries that thinks of itself as free, democratic and based on Judaeo-Christian moral authority. My fellow countrymen and women consider themselves to be the good guys. It’s so ingrained into the national consciousness it’s like a super-dogma. By implication they consider what their government does, especially internationally, morally good. ‘They are us and since we are good so too must they be’ the thinking, if any, goes. And yet domestically they denounce individual politicians and political parties in large numbers as corrupt, self-serving and elitist. The traditional political parties in most western countries are taking a beating in the polls as they are seen to represent not the people but their own pockets and supranational interests. Voters flock en masse to the so-called populist parties on both the left and right of the political spectrum. We denounce the European Union as completely undemocratic and ruled by technocrats who are at the beck-and-call of big business. Fewer and fewer of us consider ourselves to be Christians and even if we do it’s a vague sort of watered down version without much substance or clear morality. The popular narrative in fact is to be inclusive of ‘the other’ and their convictions. All creeds and convictions are supposedly equal. Tell that to the Kali-worshippers. And although we question and discard the very foundations of our own freedoms, our own democracy and our own Christian-based morality domestically, we still believe that our national and supranational governments and their attached institutions somehow represent freedom, democracy and moral authority. We still think we, both individually and collectively, are the good guys. We seem to be unable to separate the moral self-image of the individual from the morality of the state. And yet it stares us in the face.

The number of people that died in Iraq since the western aggression against that country started in 1990 has been estimated at several million. The economic sanctions imposed by the west between the first and second gulf war have cost an estimated 1.5 million Iraqi lives of which about 500.000 were children. When confronted with these numbers former US representative at the UN Madeline Albright stated that ‘it was worth it’. Hillary Clinton had a similar comment. I know of no western leader who back then condemned or denounced this and who acknowledged our actions as immoral and wrong. I could go on with numerous examples of how our western policies have resulted in mass casualties of civilians, including children, over the last few decades. If this one by itself does not start you to question morality nothing will. So if you’re not questioning now, maybe you should wonder why and take some time to contemplate the matter.

I do consider myself to be of high moral character. I have thought about this long and hard. I know right from wrong or at least I think I do. It is always tricky to confront ones own assumptions. I consider that what our western governments are doing is very, very wrong. I sense this clash between me as an individual and me as a member of a happy society that does, according to my individual sense of morality, evil. When I look around myself in my day to day life I don’t see it. Most people are like me. I feel like I fit in. Life looks nice and shiny. Bread and games for all. But when I widen the scope and see what those we let represent us do I shudder. And I feel sick to my stomach. For me there’s no doubt. The future historians will look at us and wonder in amazement. They’ll ask why we buried our head in the sand so deep, why we didn’t acknowledge the signs we were seeing. Why we didn’t call out our leaders on their immoral actions and attitudes. They’ll ask “how could they not have known they were the bad guys?”. Because we are. As long as we look away and do nothing we too are guilty. We enable the system and it fills me with shame. As long as we maintain our illusion and refuse to acknowledge that we are in fact not the free and democratic societies we pretend to be and do something about it we are as much to blame as our governments are.

R.Lesnoix is a concerned citizen who grew up during the Cold War under the constant fear of nuclear weapons. He is dismayed with the direction the western democracies are going in.


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After visiting Douma, western media begin to question ‘gas attack’ narrative

https://www.rt.com/news/424421-western-media-douma-attack-narrative/

After speaking with eyewitnesses on the ground in Syria, even mainstream media are beginning to cast doubt on the West’s narrative of an alleged gas attack in Douma, as medics tell French, German and UK media it never happened.
Agence France-Presse (AFP), the world’s third largest news agency, and the Independent, a British online newspaper, have each published stories that question whether chlorine or any other chemical was used against Syrians in Eastern Ghouta on April 7.

In a French language video report, AFP spoke with Marwan Jaber, a medical student who witnessed the aftermath of the alleged attack.

“Some of [the victims] suffered from asthma and pulmonary inflammation. They received routine treatment and some were even sent home,” Jaber told AFP. “They showed no symptoms of a chemical attack. But some foreigners entered while we were in a state of chaos and sprinkled people with water, and some of them were even filming it.”

Jaber’s testimony is consistent with claims made by a Douma doctor who spoke with veteran UK journalist Robert Fisk. Although Dr. Assim Rahaibani did not personally witness what happened in the medical clinic, he said that “all the doctors” he works with “know what happened.”

According to Rahaibani, intense shelling had created dust clouds that seeped into the basements and cellars where people lived. “People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a ‘White Helmet’, shouted ‘Gas!’, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning.”

Writing in the Independent, Fisk noted that locals he spoke with “never believed in” the gas attack stories – and that tales of President Bashar Assad’s chemical atrocities had been spread by armed Islamist groups who had imprisoned and enslaved thousands of people in Ghouta before the town was liberated by Syrian forces in April.

Meanwhile, a report aired by the German RTL Group-owned channel n-tv says it’s unclear whether the attack took place at all, given that most of the locals told them on camera they didn’t smell any chemicals at all, one local told them he remembers a “weird smell” and was fine after a glass of water, and one man, who didn’t want to show his face, insisted there was a “smell of chlorine.”

However, a local doctor told the channel: “Saturday, a week ago, we treated people with breathing problems, but chlorine or gas poisoning – no, those are different symptoms.”

All of these stories published by different outlets corroborate testimony from two men who appeared in the “gas attack” footage spread far and wide by western media and governments. Interviewed by the Russian military, the two men said they were unknowing accomplices in the gas attack ruse. “We were working and did not pay attention to who was filming us,” the first eyewitness said. “They were filming us, and then a man came in and started screaming that this was a chemical attack…People got scared and started spraying each other with water and using inhalers. Doctors told us that there was no chemical poisoning.”

Doctors and medical workers questioned by the Russian Center for Reconciliation confirmed that there had been no reports of patients suffering from chemical poisoning in Douma during the timeframe of the alleged gas attack.

The French and British media reports seem to contradict statements made by Paris and London, which have both stated unequivocally that the chemical attack did take place – and that Assad was responsible.

READ MORE: UK airstrikes in Syria based on ‘hearsay’ – Labour MP Chris Williamson (VIDEO)

French President Emmanuel Macron said before Saturday’s missile strike against Syria that he had proof that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had used chlorine to attack civilians in a militant-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta.

For her part, British Prime Minister Theresa May insisted that a “significant body of information including intelligence indicates the Syrian Regime is responsible for this latest attack.”


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Western media cover tracks of Trump, May and Macron's war crime in Syria

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/424407-fisk-syria-media-strike-war/

With astounding double-think, the US and Britain accuse Russia of "tampering" with the alleged chemical-weapon attack site in Syria's Douma – just days after the US, UK and France barraged the county with over 100 missiles.
If anyone is guilty of tampering with the alleged crime scene, it is the NATO trio who rushed to bomb Syria just as inspectors belonging to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) arrived in Syria – invited there by the Syrian and Russian governments.

The frenzied Western media campaign to find Syria and Russia guilty of a war crime involving alleged chemical weapons is further highlighted by the reporting this week by award-winning British journalist Robert Fisk.

Fisk, who has been covering Middle East war zones for nearly 40 years, went to Douma city to file his report for The Independent. Credit goes to The Independent for publishing Fisk's investigative work.

In the aftermath of the weekend's airstrikes, what he found from interviewing local people and medics is arresting, if not shocking. From Fisk's witness-gathering report, there was no gas attack carried out on April 7 – in stark contradiction to what the US, British and French governments have been declaring in hysterical tones for the past two weeks.

Those declarations culminated in the US-led bombing of Syria at the weekend. What's more, the US, British and French leaders are reserving the right to carry out further strikes on Syria – if "the regime repeats its chemical-weapons attacks on civilians."

What Robert Fisk reports from inside Douma corroborates what the Syrian government and its Russian ally have been saying consistently since the alleged incident on April 7. The incident, they say, was staged by the so-called "first responder" group known as the White Helmets, who work hand-in-glove with notorious terrorist outfits like Jaysh al-Islam and Al-Nusra Front. The White Helmets are also on the pay roll of the American CIA, as well as British and French intelligence agencies.

Similar to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's earlier claim, Fisk reports that on April 7, a panic scene was engendered in Douma's hospital by White Helmets activists who shouted that "chemical weapons" were being deployed. These activists began dousing people with water hoses and conveniently had video cameras on hand to capture the chaotic scenes acted out by unwitting civilians. A doctor in the hospital confirmed this to Fisk.

As for the supposed dozens of dead that Western governments and media blamed on "animal Assad" and Russian complicity, there is no evidence of the alleged victims. Video footage of dead people in a war zone is hardly proof.

This means that US President Trump and his British and French counterparts, Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron, just launched a criminal aggression on Syria in grave violation of international law and the country's sovereignty. This is exactly what many independent observers were decrying at the time of the missile barrage, warning that the presumed evidence for a chemical attack was far from substantiated.

Indeed, the suspicion is that Trump, May and Macron knew that their evidential ground for attacking Syria was impossibly thin, and that is why they rushed to bomb the country. It was a decision hastened by the arrival of the OPCW inspectors heading to Douma. The inspectors are due to start their investigative work on Wednesday – delayed apparently by security concerns.

In all probability, the Douma incident was a propaganda stunt orchestrated by Western-backed anti-government militants and their White Helmets media agents, precisely in order to provoke an external military attack on Syria by the US, Britain and France.

Several things stand out about Robert Fisk's latest reporting. This is exactly the kind of critical journalism that other Western media outlets should have been engaged in following the alleged chemical weapon attack on April 7. Credit goes to Fisk and The Independent. But it is a shameful case of "too little, too late."

Also, it is notable how Fisk's reportage is being roundly ignored – at least so far – by other mainstream Western media outlets. That's an impressive feat of self-censorship at a crucial time when the US, British and French governments should be open to accusations of committing a war crime on Syria over their latest blitzkrieg.

This is especially so, given their warnings of more to come, over "further" chemical-weapons use. The urgent concern is that these governments are giving themselves a license to act on more false flags. They should be held rigorously to account for their claims.

This disregard for international law is made possible because of the appalling willingness of Western mainstream media to regurgitate self-serving claims made by terrorist-affiliated groups in Syria and their propaganda outlets.

American, British and French mainstream media have given saturated coverage to the White Helmets and the Syrian American Medical Society, and the dodgy one-man-band operation in Coventry known as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. CNN, the BBC and France 24 cite these groups as if they are "authoritative" and impartial, when in fact they are all part of the regime-change campaign in Syria sponsored by the US and its British and French allies.

It is telling, too, how Robert Fisk is being assailed as a "Syrian, Russian stooge" on social media. The one Western mainstream journalist who has had the integrity to delve into Syria's Douma to uncover a very different critical perspective – one that disproves the claims peddled by the US, British and French leaders and other mainstream media – is being vilified for principled journalism.

Western corporate media are a grotesque mockery of public information and critical, independent accounting of government power.

Apart from Robert Fisk, the few other Western journalists to have ventured into Syria to report on what is really happening are independent, "alternative" sources like Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley and Patrick Henningsen. They have exposed the "Oscar-winning" White Helmets group, which is actually complicit in staging atrocities against civilians living under a reign of terror imposed by their terrorist affiliates. It is understood the White Helmets activists behind the Douma provocation on April 7 have since fled the city along with the terrorist gangs under the cover of an evacuation deal with the liberating Syrian and Russian forces, who are now in control of most of the Eastern Ghouta suburbs near Damascus.

Western media journalists, if they were really committed to principles of accuracy and critical investigation, should be poring over the rubble in Douma, interviewing local people and finding out what really happened. But they are not.

That is why, one suspects, they are not there. That is why the US and Britain are now accusing Russia of "tampering" with the site in Douma – because there is no evidence of a chemical-weapons attack, as Robert Fisk reports.

That means the US, British and French governments just committed a brazen war crime.

This would also explain why Western mainstream media have now quickly moved their focus to allegations of "Russian cyberattacks" on American and British infrastructure. This is a classic case of "keeping ahead of the story." Western governments and their dutiful media do not have a "story" – at least not the one they claim – in Syria, so the imperative is to change to another subject as quickly as possible.


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BBC Reporter Discourages Syria Questions Due To "Information War" With Russia

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-18/bbc-reporter-discourages-syria-questions-due-information-war-russia

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

A BBC interview is making the rounds today among opponents of western interventionism in Syria. The subject of the interview, Admiral Alan West, voiced some much needed skepticism about the establishment narrative around the alleged gas attack in Douma.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foj29LIXpy4&feature=youtu.be&t=3m43s

Everybody’s talking about it because West is an empire loyalist that nobody in their right mind would accuse of being an “Assad apologist” or “useful idiot of the Kremlin”, as anyone else who doesn’t swallow the official story hook, line and sinker is uniformly labeled.

West made some sensible comments about the White Helmets and the fact that Jaysh al-Islam had far more incentive to stage such an attack than Assad had to perpetrate it. Even more helpful was his personal account of having been aggressively pressured to make false reports about the success of the British bombing campaign in Bosnia, suggesting that those pressures can lead to bad intelligence and erroneous military responses.

“I just wonder, you know we’ve had some bad experiences on intelligence,” West said.

“When I was chief of defense intelligence, I had huge pressure put on me politically to try and say that our bombing campaign in Bosnia was achieving all sorts of things which it wasn’t. I was put under huge pressure, so I know the things that can happen with intelligence.”

So that’s a very significant addition to the dialogue. For me, though, the most interesting comments made in that interview came not from West, but from the BBC reporter who was interviewing him.

In the latter half of the interview, BBC’s Annita McVeigh asked the following questions after West’s comment about Bosnia:

“We know that the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday, or accused a western state on Friday, of perhaps fabricating evidence in Douma or somehow being involved in what happened in Douma. Given that we’re in an information war with Russia on so many fronts, do you think perhaps it’s inadvisable to be stating this so publicly given your position and your profile? Isn’t there a danger that you’re muddying the waters?”

Whoa.

Wait a minute, did that just happen? Did a BBC reporter just suggest that it could possibly be “inadvisable” for a retired naval officer to make public statements questioning what we’re being told to believe about Syria? That the conversation shouldn’t even be had? That the questions shouldn’t even be asked? Because we’re trying to win an “information war”? Did McVeigh really suggest that the intelligence of the same war machine which led us into Iraq on false pretenses should not be questioned at the risk of “muddying the waters”?

West was introduced as someone who was skeptical of the official Douma narrative, so he didn’t spring this stuff on McVeigh out of the blue and her questions could easily have been prepared in advance. I am genuinely curious if she came up with this bizarre line of inquiry on her own or was given it by a superior. Attempts to contact McVeigh via email and Twitter have thus far gone unanswered; I’ll update this if she responds.

You know you’re in trouble when the military man tries to do the journalist’s job by asking questions and holding power to account… and the journalist tries to stop him.

I have said that truth is the first casualty in war and that this is doubly true of cold war, but it isn’t supposed to be that way. We all know that the BBC has an extensive history of functioning as a propaganda firm for the western war machine, but it isn’t supposed to be that way. It isn’t supposed to be a BBC reporter’s job to concern herself with beating Russia in an “information war”, it’s supposed to be her job to tell the truth and hold power to account.

By suggesting that winning an “information war” with Russia should take priority over critical thinking and truth telling, McVeigh essentially admitted that she is a propagandist for the western war engine. Her comments say a lot about how she sees her role at the BBC, and it’s likely that this is a culture that is being fostered within the entire outlet as well.

This is very concerning. Anyone who’s studied the situation in Syria understands that western military involvement always comes with a risk of confrontation with not just the armed forces of the Syrian government, but with those of Russia and Iran as well. All that it would take right now is a miscommunication or a weapon discharging in an unintended way to set off a swift chain of events that could lead to all out hot war, which when Russia is involved always comes with the possibility of a nuclear warhead being deployed by either side in the chaos and setting Mutually Assured Destruction into effect.

These are not at all outlandish possibilities to consider; they are breathing down our necks as you read this. And yet in this hotly volatile climate, people are being dissuaded from asking questions.

We as individuals are all vastly smarter and wiser than the oligarchs who rule us, and we can handle picking our way through a wide array of information, even information which runs counter to western interests in an “information war”. Ideas are not inherently dangerous. What is dangerous is truth being hidden from the public, making us incapable of making accurate determinations about what’s true and what’s false and using that knowledge to make our wishes known to power. What is dangerous is escalations with a nuclear superpower and its allies and a steadily increasing hostility toward skepticism and detente advocacy.

It isn’t their place to protect us from ideas and information. It isn’t their place to use us as pawns in their idiotic “information war”. They need to stop concerning themselves with controlling the way we think.

We are not children that they get to lie to because they believe it is in our best interest. The state of the world today shows that the people running our media and our governments are the very last people on earth who should be making such calls on our behalf.


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We as individuals are all vastly smarter and wiser than the oligarchs who rule us

Careful Caitlin.. do not underestimate your designated enemy, and do not deceive yourself with misplaced generalisations. I know a lot of people who are thick as ****! Their 'ideas' are given to them and they live, act and vote accordingly.

Ideas are not inherently dangerous.

Some would disagree:

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo

In the sense that the only thing that can change the world for the better is new ideas and as such 'ideas' are inherently dangerous to an entrenched order.

Idea

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

In philosophy, ideas are usually construed as mental representational images of some object. Ideas can also be abstract concepts that do not present as mental images.[1] Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being. The capacity to create and understand the meaning of ideas is considered to be an essential and defining feature of human beings. In a popular sense, an idea arises in a reflexive, spontaneous manner, even without thinking or serious reflection, for example, when we talk about the idea of a person or a place. A new or original idea can often lead to innovation.[2]


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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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What Can Be Done?

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/04/30/can-done-paul-craig-roberts/

Paul Craig Roberts

April 30, 2018

It is up to Europe whether or not the Earth dies in nuclear Armageddon.

European governments do not realize their potential to save the world from Washington’s aggression, because the western Europeans are accustomed to being Washington’s vassal states since the end of World War 2, and the eastern and central Europeans have accepted Washington’s vassalage since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Vassalage pays well if all the costs are not counted.

By joining NATO, the eastern and central Europeans permitted Washington to move US military presence to Russia’s borders. This military presence on Russia’s borders gave Washington undue confidence that Russia also could be coerced into a vassal state existence. Despite the dire fate of the two finest armies ever assembled—Napoleon’s Grand Army and that of Germany’s Wehrmacht—Washington hasn’t learned that the two rules of warfare are: (1) Don’t march on Russia. (2) Don’t march on Russia.

Because of Europe’s subservience to Washington, Washington is unlikely to learn this lesson before Washington marches on Russia.

Washington in its hubristic idiocy has already begun this march piecemeal with the coup in Ukraine and with its attacks on Syrian military positions. As I wrote earlier today https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/04/30/syrian-cisis-escalates/ Washington is escalating the crisis in Syria.

What can stop this before it explodes into war is eastern and central Europe’s decision to disengage as enablers of Washington’s aggression.

There are no benefits to Europe of being in NATO. Europeans are not threatened by Russian aggression, but they are threatened by Washington’s aggression against Russia. If the American neoconservatives and their Israeli allies succeed in provoking a war, all of Europe would be destroyed. Forever.

What is wrong with European politicians that they take this risk with the peoples that they govern?

Europe is still a place of beauty constructed by humans over the ages—architecturally, artistically, and intellectually—and the museum should not be destroyed. Once free of Washington’s vassalage, Europe could even be brought back to creative life.

Europe is already suffering economically from Washington’s illegal sanctions against Russia forced upon Europeans by Washington and from the millions of non-European refugees flooding the European countries fleeing from Washington’s illegal wars against Muslim peoples, wars that Americans are forced to fight for the benefit of Israel.

What do Europeans get for the extreme penalties imposed on them as Washington’s vassals? They get nothing but the threat of Armageddon. A small handful of European “leaders” get enormous subsidies from Washington for enabling Washington’s illegal agendas. Just take a look at Tony Blair’s enormous fortune, which is not the normal reward for a British prime minister.

Europeans, including the “leaders,” have much more to gain from being connected to the Russia/China Silk Road project. It is the East that is rising, not the West. The Silk Road would connect Europe to the rising East. Russia has undeveloped territory full of resources—Siberia—that is larger than the United States. On a purchasing power parity basis, China is already the world’s largest economy. Militarily the Russian/Chinese alliance is much more than a match for Washington.

If Europe had any sense, any leadership, it would tell Washington good-bye.

What is the value to Europe of Washington’s hegemony over the world? How do Europeans, as opposed to a handful of politicians receiving bags full of money from Washington, benefit from their vassalage to Washington? Not one benefit can be identified. Washington’s apologists say that Europe is afraid of being dominated by Russia. So why aren’t Europeans afraid of their 73 years of domination by Washington, especially a domination that is leading them into military conflict with Russia?

Unlike Europeans and Russians, Americans have scant experience with wartime casualties. Just one World War 1 battle, the Battle of Verdun, produced more casualties than the battle deaths that US has experienced in all the wars of its existence beginning with the Revolutionary War for independence from Britain.

The World War 1 Battle of Verdun,which took place prior to the US entry into the war, was the longest and most costly battle in human history. An estimate in 2000 found a total of 714,231 casualties, 377,231 French and 337,000 German, for an average of 70,000 casualties a month; other recent estimates increase the number of casualties to 976,000 during the battle, with 1,250,000 suffered at Verdun during the war.

In contrast, US casualties for World War 1 after US entry were 53,402 battle deaths and 200,000 nonmortal woundings.

Here is the list of US battle deaths from the War of Revolution through the “global war on terror” as of August 2017:

American Revolution: 4,435
War of 1812: 2,260
Wars against native Americans (1817-1898):   1,000
Mexican War:   1,733
War of Northern Aggression :
North:   104,414
South:   74,524
Spanish-American War:   385
World War 2:   291,557
Korean War:   33,739
Vietnam War:   47,434
Gulf War:   148

This comes to 561,629 battle deaths

If we add the battle deaths of the global war on terror as of Aug. 2017—6,930—we have 568,559 US battle deaths in all US wars. See: https://www.infoplease.com/us/american-wars/americas-wars-us-casualties-and-veterans

That compares to 714,231 casualties, from which I am unable at this time to separate battle deaths from nonmortal wounds and maiming from a single World War 1 battle that did not involve US soldiers.

In other words, except for the Confederate States and native Americans, who endured enormous Union war crimes, the US has no experience of war. So Washington enters war with ease. The next time, however, will be Armageddon, and Washington will no longer exist. And neither will the rest of us.

US deaths in World War 1 were low because the US did not enter the war until the last year. Similarly in World War 2. Japan was defeated by the loss of her navy and air force and by the firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, which required few US battle deaths. The nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were gratuitous and took place when Japan was asking to surrender. Approximately 200,000 Japanese civilians died in the nuclear attacks and no Americans except prisoners of war held in those cities. In Europe, as in World War 1, the US did not enter the war against Germany until the last year when the Wehrmacht had already been broken and defeated by the Soviet Red Army. The Normandy invasion faced scant opposition as all German forces were on the Russian front.

If there is a World War 3 the US and all of the Western world would be immediately destroyed as nothing stands between the West and the extraordinary nuclear capability of Russia except the likelihood of complete and total destruction. If China enters on Russia’s side, as is expected, the destruction of the entirety of the Western World will be for all time.

Why does Europe enable this scenario? Is there no humanity, no intelligence left anywhere in Europe? Is Europe nothing but a collection of cattle awaiting slaughter from the machinations of the crazed American neocons? Are there no European political leaders with one ounce of common sense, one ounce of integrity?

If not, doom is upon us as there is no humanity or intelligence in Washington.

Europe must take the lead, especially the central Europeans. These are peoples who were liberated from the Nazis by the Russians and who have in the 21st century experienced far more aggression from Washington’s pursuit of its hegemony they they have experienced from Moscow.

If Europe breaks away from Washington’s control, there is hope for life. If not, we are as good as dead.
   
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