The time that “Boshirov and Petrov” were allegedly in Salisbury carrying out the attack is all entirely within the period the Skripals were universally reported to have left their home with their mobile phones switched off.
A key hole in the British government’s account of the Salisbury poisonings has been plugged – the lack of any actual suspects. And it has been plugged in a way that appears broadly convincing – these two men do appear to have traveled to Salisbury at the right time to have been involved.
But what has not been established is the men’s identity and that they are agents of the Russian state, or just what they did in Salisbury. If they are Russian agents, they are remarkably amateur assassins. Meanwhile the new evidence throws the previously reported timelines into confusion – and demolishes the theories put out by “experts” as to why the Novichok dose was not fatal.
This BBC report gives a very useful timeline summary of events.
At 09.15 on Sunday 4 March the Skripals’ car was seen on CCTV driving through three different locations in Salisbury. Both Skripals had switched off their mobile phones and they remained off for over four hours, which has baffled geo-location.
There is no CCTV footage that indicates the Skripals returning to their home. It has therefore always been assumed that they last touched the door handle around 9am.
But the Metropolitan Police state that Boshirov and Petrov did not arrive in Salisbury until 11.48 on the day of the poisoning. That means that they could not have applied a nerve agent to the Skripals’ doorknob before noon at the earliest. But there has never been any indication that the Skripals returned to their home after noon on Sunday 4 March. If they did so, they and/or their car somehow avoided all CCTV cameras. Remember they were caught by three CCTV cameras on leaving, and Borishov and Petrov were caught frequently on CCTV on arriving.
The Skripals were next seen on CCTV at 13.30, driving down Devizes road. After that their movements were clearly witnessed or recorded until their admission to hospital.
So even if the Skripals made an “invisible” trip home before being seen on Devizes Road, that means the very latest they could have touched the doorknob is 13.15. The longest possible gap between the novichok being placed on the doorknob and the Skripals touching it would have been one hour and 15 minutes. Do you recall all those “experts” leaping in to tell us that the “ten times deadlier than VX” nerve agent was not fatal because it had degraded overnight on the doorknob? Well that cannot be true. The time between application and contact was between a minute and (at most) just over an hour on this new timeline.
In general it is worth observing that the Skripals, and poor Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, all managed to achieve almost complete CCTV invisibility in their widespread movements around Salisbury at the key times, while in contrast “Petrov and Boshirov” managed to be frequently caught in high quality all the time during their brief visit.
This is especially remarkable in the case of the Skripals’ location around noon on 4 March. The government can only maintain that they returned home at this time, as they insist they got the nerve agent from the doorknob. But why was their car so frequently caught on CCTV leaving, but not at all returning? It appears very much more probable that they came into contact with the nerve agent somewhere else, while they were out.
“Boshirov and Petrov” plainly are of interest in this case. But only Theresa May stated they were Russian agents: the police did not, and stated that they expected those were not their real identities. We do not know who Boshirov and Petrov were. It appears very likely their appearance was to do with the Skripals on that day. But they may have been meeting them, outside the home. The evidence points to that, rather than doorknobs. Such a meeting might explain why the Skripals had turned off their mobile phones to attempt to avoid surveillance.
It is also telling the police have pressed no charges against them in the case of Dawn Sturgess, which would be manslaughter at least if the government version is true.
If “Boshirov and Petrov” are secret agents, their incompetence is astounding. They used public transport rather than a vehicle and left the clearest possible CCTV footprint. They failed in their assassination attempt. They left traces of novichok everywhere and could well have poisoned themselves, and left the “murder weapon” lying around to be found. Their timings in Salisbury were extremely tight – and British Sunday rail service dependent.
There are other possibilities of who “Boshirov and Petrov” really are, of which Ukrainian is the obvious one. One thing I discovered when British Ambassador to Uzbekistan was that there had been a large Ukrainian ethnic group of scientists working at the Soviet chemical weapon testing facility there at Nukus. There are many other possibilities.
Yesterday’s revelations certainly add to the amount we know about the Skripal event. But they raise as many new questions as they give answers.
Same old. Anti-semitism smears being used in NY as here.
‘Shameful smear’: Anti-Semitism mailer targets New York Democrat in contentious primary
Published: 11 Sep 2018
Ahead of New York’s Democratic primary, someone within the party has paid for a mailer accusing progressive gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon of anti-Semitism.
Approved and paid for by the New York State Democratic Committee, the mailer accuses Nixon of remaining “silent on the rise of anti-Semitism,” and supporting BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), a worldwide movement to boycott Israeli goods. Nixon, it argues, “won’t stand strong for our Jewish communities.”
The mailer was delivered to 7,000 New York households, and cost around $11,300, according to journalist Zach Fink. It was sent out on Saturday, one day before the start of Rosh Hashanah, or Jewish New Year.
Nixon accused rival Democrat and incumbent Governor Andrew Cuomo of approving the mailer, and called it an “attack not only on my family, but on all New Yorkers.” The former ‘Sex and the City’ actress added that the grandparents of her two children with Danny Mozes escaped the Holocaust.’
/..
https://www.rt.com/usa/438122-cynthia-nixon-anti-semitism/
Radio 4 propaganda in full swing this morning regarding the Russian threat. A softly spoken American woman telling us that we shouldn’t be scared to stand up to Russia, despite their threats and their interference on the borders of NATO.
You couldn’t make it up. Russia is bullying us, that’s the narrative.
Forget the decimation of Iraq and Libya, our support for the Saudi slaughter, Israel, etc. Forget the US military bases all over the world. Forget our illegal interference in Syria. Forget CIA meddling in Ukraine, NATO war games on Russia’s borders, and the fact that the US military dwarfs Russia’s. Forget just about everything that happened over the last 400 years.
Bullying Russian bastards.
Millions of children and old folks neefed to be nuked and chemical weaponed in order to be freed. So it is writ in the gospel of McCain, stirringly recited by Barack and co last week.
Let us take some time to commemorate and remember the great crime against human social democracy by the aristocratic/banker thugs and killers on 11th September – a date that lives in infamy – no matter how much they try and obfuscate it.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/09/chile-coup-santiago-allende-social-democracy-september-11-2
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/events/chile-coup-detat-1973
Allende fought until the last hours of his life to defend the social gains and constitutional order. On his last speech, just minutes before the military bombed the presidential palace, he gave Chileans one last message of hope.
“I will not resign. Placed in a historic transition, I will pay the loyalty of the people with my life. And I tell them I have the certainty that the seed that we have planted in the dignified conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled. You have the power, they can destroy us, but social progress cannot be stopped neither by crime nor by force. History is ours, and people make it happen.”
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/4-Things-to-Remember-About-Chiles-1973-Coup-20160626-0012.html
Dung,
Very moving, respect.
Back to the Skripals, more specifically the switching off of mobile phones, and eavesdropping chicanery in general, this may be of interest:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
(Especially for Mr Blogs’ enjoyment)
The other 911.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/09/chile-coup-salvador-allende-cia/380082/
This is a great listen on the Chile coup of 1973
https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/chile
Can you imagine how people would respond if Trump and May told us we need to mobilise and go to war with Russia? In Scotland I think more would die laughing at the suggestion than on any battlefields.
Maybe they would hope to get the queen to try and convince us…lol
I don’t have a problem with Pinochet, Hitler et al – it is the willingness of people, colleagues, brothers, friends who support and die for them that terrifies me.
‘Pinochet later consolidated power with the support of the United States and ruled the country with an iron fist for 17 years, until 1990. He jailed an estimated 80,000 people, tortured 30,000 and murdered around 3,200. Only 75 of more than a thousand of his former agents are serving prison sentences for human rights violations.’
Hitler also had support from the US and UK bankers.
(As have Isis).
Kissinger is the grand operator and organiser of the many woes of the world in his lifetime. He must bathe in freshly drawn blood of innocents every night that keeps him alive and fed and his vampire wings in good order.
His blood sucking offspring across the planet, regularly genuflect to the old barbarian
https://mobile.twitter.com/jeremy_hunt/status/1032360933824389120?lang=en
What ant utter and complete… Hunt!
I don’t think there would be any battlefields. We would just nuke each other. Might be a good time to buy shares in companies that build nuclear bunkers.
bunkers are for drones, i hear the masters of war are buying bolt holes in new zealand – clean southern breezes
The Earth is a little blue dot in a very big dark space, viewed from a million miles away.
It is not in anyway isolated from it self. It has the same air and water it always has – everything circulates. That there circle of life!
Any bunkers in NewZealand would collapse in their regular earthquakes and radioactivity would reach it within months even if the bombs didn’t fall on that bit off the 5 eyed monster.
I’d like to think those of our elite who survive a nuclear war will be targeted by their opponents who also survived the war. Russia, China and Iran should send in their engineers and spend years if need be breaching the tunnels, and divert large bodies of water into them and drown them like the rats they are. If part of a tunnel is near the coast divert the sea into it; that won’t stop flooding until the water reaches sea level. Failing that poison their air. Who could they bitch to?
New Zealand’s prevailing winds come from the West.
hottest area in the world is on the equator – so predominantly wind flows away from it north and south. So the UK has mainly flows from the south west. Most nuclear weapons are housed in the northern hemisphere.
We would just nuke each other. Might be a good time to buy shares in companies that build nuclear bunkers.
Good idea. The share certificates would be handy for lighting campfires when we emerge from the bunkers.
And I bet that if May did take us to war, it would be Scottish regiments comprising the cannon-fodder.
What if Ant and Dec told you, or Alex McLeish told you, or Jeremy Corbyn told you? How about David Beckham? Or Google and Facebook and Twitter? Or your local council? Or the government’s chief medical adviser told you? Or the Duchess of Cambridge? Or J K Rowling? Emma Watson? All the actors in “Game of Thrones”? Your GP? Or it came on your smartphone?
Influence doesn’t work by “here are 60 million people and here’s the schoolmistress Mrs May – ooh! she runs the country you know! – telling them all what to do”.
Now imagine bare supermarket shelves, dry petrol pumps, ration cards, typhoid jabs, cash machines out of operation, power cuts, water supply problems, nuclear sirens. Perhaps even your smartphone starts doing unexpected things (ooh-er!) – people are going to have a rollicking old belly laugh, are they? The first time they hear a prime minister’s address to the nation, perhaps after the software systems at most of the hospitals have stopped, or Dover has been anthraxed, people are going to reject what they hear? Really?
Will everyone still be guffawing in the water queue, or when they’re queuing to get their typhoid jab before they get their bread ration, or by the body piles as they get burnt in the street?
Do you think a propensity in the population (Scottish or otherwise) to view things as they really are is going to stop WW3? So it goes like this:
1) British population: “Ha ha ha! We won’t believe that from you, Mrs May! Thought you could fool us, did you?”
2) Everything starts working again, all the hits (cyber or physical) get magically reversed, anyone who is ill gets better again, Blighty declares neutrality, and the British fleet does an about turn somewhere near Sicily.
Does anyone know who is behind the IHRA? Is it a front for the government of Is…l?
Wash your mouth out.
It’s a German & Swedish venture, supported by some Nobel prize winners.
Yeah, but is it a front for Is…l? Why else would it produce a document designed to nuke Jeremy Corbyn?
Of course the IHRA is owned by Z__nists.
Take a look too at the ADL, CPMAJO, AIPAC, JAFI, WZO, JINSA, and in Britain BOD and CST.
Some like to say that the big J__ish “community organisations” are independent of I__ael, but it’s all effectively one organisation. That’s part of the news that fascist c***s like IHRA don’t want spreading.
Wow! I just looked them up in Wikipedia. I’d never heard of most of them.
Nobel Prize winners, huh? Like Yasser Arafat then?
Obama too! 😉
The Russian Dyrian dilemma is that there are apparently three independent invaders with a footholds in Syria. They can either pretend to act independently or call each other as backup. At the moment Turkey is at the forefront of the belligerents.
A good day, and a good time, to refresh our minds on False Flag attack/hoax ops., with Caitlin Johnstone:
‘THAT TIME CNN STAGED A FAKE INTERVIEW WITH A SYRIAN CHILD FOR WAR PROPAGANDA’:
https://southfront.org/that-time-cnn-staged-a-fake-interview-with-a-syrian-child-for-war-propaganda/
Extremely good links in it; should convince any genuine person who is still half-buying the ‘official narrative’ on Assad, CW’s, and other things.
And I’ll just add my two penneth worth: also remember the ‘young Kuwaiti 15 year old girl, who tearfully ‘explained’ to a nation-wide US TV audience that she personally had witnessed in Kuwait Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of incubators and throwing them on the cold floor, and stealing the incubators. This turned public opinion to supporting military action to kick Iraqi troops out of Kuwait (although the US Ambassador had tipped Saddam the wink that the US would not be bothered by his planned incursion).
It later became known that the ’15 year old girl’ was none other than the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador, and had been nowhere near Kuwait at the time, but had been coaxed what to say and how to say it by one of the most prestigious PR firms in the States.
Some news headlines are now saying that the filming of a staged chemical attack in Idlib has commenced…
Here is an item on the Russian Exercise that started today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeAtimSCxsY
Looks like an American exercise to me.
And here is the Irish viewpoint on the subject.-
https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/world-news/sinister-past-novichok-assassins-grandfather-13200438
And from St Petersberg, some brave support from the stupid!
http://infosurhoy.com/cocoon/saii/xhtml/en_GB/top-stories/security-minister-says-putin-is-directly-responsible-for-novichok-attack/
So at the same time the Irish Mirror accepts that the names of the two so called Novichok assassins are aliases, they know the ancestral tree of one of them.
I feel insulted that a newspaper should consider us so stupid.
There has be a significant number of cancellations from high profile act to the Israeli Meteor Music festival.
BDS are hailing it as a resounding victory that headlines stars such as Lana Del Ray, have withdrawn from the festival, at least twenty of the acts have followed suit, and withdrawn.
Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs spends millions of dollars trying to counter BDS, and US supporters of Israel, run outreach programmes in college campuses, to persuade young impressionable minds that Israel is being treated unfairly by BDS.
Bolstered by this success BDS are to push for the Eurovision Song contest to be removed from Israel and given to another nation to host next year.
Fromer Pink Floyd front man Roger Waters will lead the charge.
You think young, impressionable minds are being persuaded in favour of Israel at university? Seriously? The entire university experience is one long barrage against Israel.
And I see nothing at all wrong with Israel fighting back against BDS, which it should be reiterated is also an attack on Palestinian farmers and producers. In fact you’ve reminded me to add a whole bunch of Israeli produce to my shopping trolley later on at Waitrose.
In fact you’ve reminded me to add a whole bunch of Israeli produce to my shopping trolley later on at Waitrose.
… and YOU’ve reminded everyone who ISN’T amused by the deliberate shooting of Palestinian children to treat all Isra*li produce in all supermarkets with ‘special care.’
I argue that people should buy it. Thats my view. Some argue that people shouldn’t buy it, which is fair enough. It’s their choice.
But it says a lot about the hard left that they actually have to vandalize it, so that nobody can buy it.
Please dont include Latroun wine among them despite its code.Before being shot up the monastery was Palestines leading producer.
I argue that people should buy it. Thats my view. Some argue that people shouldn’t buy it, which is fair enough. It’s their choice.
I argue that SHOPS shouldn’t buy Israeli produce.
Here’s some advice from the Isra*li Gardener’s Question Time on how to grow an avocado.
Build an illegal settlement on Palestinian land. Encourage armed settlers to terrorise the local Palestinians. Send in the IDF to protect the settlers. Shoot anyone who protests, including children. Burn, uproot and plough ancient olive groves. Build a farm settlement instead. Shoot anyone who protests, including children. Replace the olive trees with avocados and irrigate them by diverting all the accessible water in the area. Poison and pollute any springs that can’t be diverted. Shoot anyone who protests, including children. Sell the avocados to Isra*li-owned global supermarket chains. If anyone protests, get stooges on blogs to complain about the morality of BDS.
“I argue that SHOPS shouldn’t buy Israeli produce.”
Which is just another way of denying people the choice. And if that doesn’t work, you just vandalize it.
How long until you start burning shops down that sell Israeli produce? Do you see where this “nobody should be allowed anything I don’t approve of” attitude leads yet?
Sorry, Anon1, I wrongly assumed you would recognise the stooge I referred to above. I’ll spell it out for you : I will not take lessons in morality from someone who supports genocide.
What genocide? You’re just making things up now.
what genocide?
Well, first, thanks for providing me this platform, Anon1.
Now, where to begin? Let’s start with my description of Isra*li agriculture methods. Here it is again :
Build an illegal settlement on Palestinian land. Encourage armed settlers to terrorise the local Palestinians. Send in the IDF to protect the settlers. Shoot anyone who protests, including children. Burn, uproot and plough ancient olive groves. Build a farm settlement instead. Shoot anyone who protests, including children. Replace the olive trees with avocados and irrigate them by diverting all the accessible water in the area. Poison and pollute any springs that can’t be diverted. Shoot anyone who protests, including children.
Now before we discuss how this relates to genocide, would you agree that my description is accurate? If you dispute any part of it, please specify.
Oh look Anon1’s claim of advanced technological breakthroughs in Israel is true.
https://www.israel21c.org/the-top-12-most-amazing-israeli-medical-advances/
The Nazi’s were good at that as well, who’d have though it.
The story you relay is absolutely disgusting, abhorrent in the extreme. Why is the Uk supporting this barbarism? Can you link to evidence of this?
Not just filth-a moron too. Reducing the appalling treatment of Palestinians to a question of choice about buying Isr^eli avocados in Waitrose. Come on Anon1, list the choices the people of Gaza have over the schools, hospitals etc.
ICYMI
https://electronicintifada.net/content/censored-film-names-adam-milstein-canary-mission-funder/25356
Good on them and especially Roger Waters. Reposting this video of him talking to Sophie Shevardnadze.
https://www.rt.com/news/437203-roger-waters-interview-rt-censorship/
Please tell your doctor that you would like to boycott all Israeli technology and medicines at your next appointment.
Just rolled out of bed, non, chum?
She could then tell her doctor that she would prefer to be subject only to the medicines, technologies and medical breakthroughs of the Arab nations …
The majority of medical technology is not solely produced by Israel….
No, but a lot is. Along with all sorts of things you probably use every day but have no idea it comes from Israel.
I’m just wondering how far you would take this. If you were diagnosed with a terminal illness and a life-saving drug was developed in Israel that made profits for Israel companies would you take it?
The BDS strategy is susceptible to attack by reductio ad absurdum only if the current level of sanctions on cultural events and everyday products is insufficient to hurt Israel’s image. Your desperate urge to resort to such an attack proves the point.
Got a handy website that lists all things Israeli pls A1? i wan’t to make sure i don’t end up supporting Palestinians pretending to be Israeli by mistake.
Just go and demolish your local hospital. You can be absolutely certain that it conatins no Arab products or developments.
“Just go and demolish your local hospital. You can be absolutely certain that it conatins no Arab products or developments.”
You may just be surprised how many doctors of Arab origin keep the NHS going.
Re SA’s post (17.11)
Having moved to a different area, I met my GP for the first time a month ago…Iranian. He’s been at the practice for 12 years but I don’t suppose he’ll be allowed to stay in this country for much longer. More’s the pity, he seemed a very pleasant and competent medic.
This is Bolton in support of Israel. I think he doth protest too much. When has the ICC ever taken a member of an Israel government to trial for their numerous war crimes?
‘Unjust court’: Bolton vows to use ‘any means’ to protect US ally Israel from ICC
The US has announced its decision not to cooperate with the International Criminal Court, vowing to protect itself and its “friend and ally” Israel from the judicial body. It also threatened sanctions against the “unjust” court.
10 September 2018 | 16:52 GMT
https://www.rt.com/usa/438099-icc-bolton-protect-us-allies/
SKRIPAL (in case anyone’s still interested):
I don’t think the infamous perfume bottle has any direct connection to the Salisbury poisoning.
If CR is to be believed, it was opened from new. If it were an assassin’s accessory it must have been discarded on the day, 4 March, still wrapped. CR must have found it very soon thereafter or it would have made its way to landfill, along with the activated version, and the other contents of the bin in question. Had he done that it would not have languished for four months before being opened.
That the police claim to have discovered the packaging among visible kitchen refuse suggests it had not lain for months in CR’s flat either. Hence it came onto the premises more recently, i.e. long after the ‘suspects’ had left Salisbury. The presence of the bottle on the work top suggests the apparatus was assembled by CR and tested by DS in the kitchen, not the bathroom. Counterfeit or not, did it really contain something other than perfume?
If, as the Met. have long insisted, the Amesbury and Salisbury cases are linked, then it has to be on some basis other than the contents of this perfume bottle specifically.
I am still interested. Clearly if Charlie Rowley’s perfume bottle did contain nerve agent, it was deposited there recently = no way it would have hung around for months, let alone have been in pristine condition several months later. If so how it got there and who put it there remain unanswered questions.
Charlie brought the bottle into the house. What it contained is another matter altogether. I very much doubt there would have been two groups discarding toxic waste four months apart. Charlie could not remember where he ‘found’ it. Odd that as it must have been a recent acquisition on his part. Maybe Charlie really had it delivered. Then what? The bottle did not become the subject of suspicion until the police deemed it so, which might suggest that CR actually bought it as – perfume. Did the pair therefore fall victim to something else (in the bathroom) or did Charlie put the milk in the tea, so to speak?
SKRIPALS
I have previously floated the possibility that Charlie and Dawn were witnesses to the Skripal poisoning and had to be silenced because of that. Were they the couple in the CCTV footage from the Snap Fitness centre?
They may have been more than witnesses for all we know. Otherwise, who did do it? CR and DS would not have left their names and addresses for later contact in July. At the very least the pair are a better fit for the couple shown in the CCTV still than Boshirov and Petrov, who stand exonerated in any case on account of that late perfume discovery (there surely weren’t two teams in the area!).
The official line was surely that he found it in a charity bin behind the shops in the town centre. Was that part of the original decontamination zone?
Yes, but did he find it in March and not open it until June or did he find it in June? If the latter, how come the bin had not been emptied for 4 months? Was it a donations bin (e.g. for clothes) or a rubbish bin?
That’s the whole point. If he found the package later then it was left later. But is he claiming to have found it because he did or because that’s what the Met. told him he must have done?
The Heil is keeping the Skripal pot simmering.
From studying in the Soviet military to posing on his wedding day: Never-before-seen pictures of Sergei Skripal as it’s revealed his daughter came to Salisbury to say she was getting married before they were poisoned
Yulia Skripal hired a renovator to turn room into nursery at her home in Moscow
Then travelled to Salisbury to ask for father’s blessing to marry Stepan Vikeev
Comes after police released photos of men suspected in nerve agent attack
10 September 2018
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6152153/Poisoned-Yulia-Skripal-gone-Salisbury-tell-Russian-spy-father-planning-marry.html
Much fuller reporting on this online than in the print version which I saw this morning. The print version is full of stuff about Johnson and Ms Symonds and how much influence she was able to exert within the Tory partei.
This is the version in the print edition today.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6153181/Did-Carrie-Symonds-fight-John-Worboys-jail-cost-job.html
This is the online story today. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6154059/Boris-Johnsons-former-Tory-aide-Carrie-Symonds-fails-turn-day-new-PR-job.html
Recent contributions from our inhouse friend mainly feature A-S, the holocaust and Corbyn. Quel surprise!. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?sel=site&searchPhrase=jake+wallis+simons
You had requested that contributors refrain from further comment on the Skripal story and that Craig should “move on”. And yet here we have a cut and paste from the Mail on the Skripal story.
Was it really that you were overwhelmed by all the new commenters around you and were struggling for space In what you consider to be your own blog?
Fascist = anyone I don’t agree with.
I call him Bunny. 🙂
Bunny is one of yours, dear.
This is a cut and paste from the idiotic New York Times piece yesterday, that basically regurgitated the British propaganda while adding slants of colour and innuendo about Putin’s past.
‘Staged Filming of Mock ‘Chemical Attacks’ Has Begun in Idlib – Russian MoD’:
https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201809111067930808-idlib-footage-alleged-chemical-attacks/?
‘…”According to the information received from inhabitants of Idlib province, militants are now filming a staged provocation in the city of Jisr al-Shugur, where “chemical weapons” are depicted as being used by the Syrian army against civilians. The film crews of several Middle Eastern TV channels arrived in Jisr al-Shugur in the morning, as well as the regional affiliate of one of the main American television news networks,” the Reconciliation Center said.’…’
Murderous scumbag lying War Criminals! They are so brazen, they are going to still push it even though it’s been warned of by the Russians. I’ll give the British Propaganda Corporation a bit of a rant this afternoon, telling them to get their a**es over to Syria so they can get a preview (16:30 Demo BBC Portland Place today).
They do their reporting on Syria from Beirut. Apparently the terror groups who have offered to host then can’t be trusted. Nothing like having your finger on the pulse.
Robert Fisk is there and always worth reading.
Even more worth reading, Vanessa Beeley, who spends a lot of time in Syria.
I was talking about the BBC, not independents. Fisk and Beeley are very good and all the better for actually being there.
Don’t know anything about Beeley but Fisk just makes stuff up and then says he was there in his gushing “I was there” articles. Usually he hasn’t even left his hotel room.
Beeley is nothing more than a propaganda mouthpiece for Assad who has referred to her and Bartlett as his female soldiers.
“Beeley is nothing more than a propaganda mouthpiece for Assad…”
Unsupported assertion.
“…who has referred to her and Bartlett as his female soldiers.”
Irrelevant to the assertion.
Next.
Not true.
I think you’ll find you are wrong there. Fisk’s very good.
Beeley described meeting Assad as her proudest moment.
https://medium.com/@Brian_Whit/assad-defender-vanessa-beeley-to-speak-at-union-backed-festival-48e7378d087c
During the war in Libya other ME journalists claimed Fisk never got closer to the action than a luxury hotel in Italy. There are too many stories about Fisk fabricating or exaggerating stories to ignore.
http://hurryupharry.org/2012/03/23/robert-fisk-makes-things-up/
The terror groups can’t trust each other either, they constantly assassinate and fight each other
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/trouble-in-paradise-hts-attacks-rebel-allies-in-northern-latakia-as-syrian-armys-offensive-nears/
Filming of staged chemical attack in Syria’s Idlib begins, Russian top brass says
More: http://tass.com/defense/1021010
*Ibid*
Given that all the remaining terror groups are now concentrated in Idlib, the rest of Syria and its people are now at the mercy the murderous Assad regime. Why then do you fink he ain’t a-gassin’ and a-barrel-bombin’ dem and, if he am, why ain’t we heard nuffink about it?
Because they have been brought back under his control, obvs. They don’t have a choice over whether they can get rid of him, remember? They will be tortured, shot, barrel bombed and gassed into submission. Just the sort of regime so beloved of the far-left (while every little misdemeanour of the West is placed under a microscope).
“They don’t have a choice over whether they can get rid of him, remember?”
Not sure when the next presidential election is due or whether Assad is constitutionally entitled to stand again.
Yawn.
“They will be tortured, shot, barrel bombed and gassed into submission.”
Well done Anon 1, almost full marks. But please explain why you would barrel bomb someone who is captive? And also why would you be using crude ineffective barrel bombs when you have the most modern stuff.
Why don’t the ‘rebel’ Syrians surrender like they did in the south?
The foreign mercenaries can fuck off back to where they came from – using the same route via Turkey. The ethnic Syrians can rejoin their fellow citizens – as ling as they didn’t partake in murder on their fellow citizens. Seems fair?
Dungroanin
In order to liberate areas elsewhere, the terms of surrender agreed between the Syrian Govt and ‘the rebels’ were that the ‘rebels’ and their families had the choice of returning to normal society and reconciling with the Assad Government (and not being required to do mandatory military service for six months) or being taken by bus to Idlib which was always the primary ‘rebel’ stronghold in Syria. It was the foreign ‘rebels’ and the extremists amongst the Syrians who opted to go to Idlib. The principle behind this was to give the rest of Syria breathing space to recover away from ‘rebel’ control and to have all the ‘rebels’ and their supporters corralled in one area for the time being. There is much more comprehensive detail about the choice of Idlib and other background info in the following link:
https://off-guardian.org/2018/09/08/donald-trump-comes-out-in-support-of-islamic-terrorists/
The Russians and Syrian Army have been manning a humanitarian corridor on the outskirts of Idlib since 31 July, for the benefit of civilians wishing to leave the city; there still remain a number of local people there who support the Assad Government. Many of those leaving have in interviews shown on RT reported that the terrorists were threatening them and shooting at them to stop them leaving but they had managed to escape. Presumably any ‘rebels’ getting cold feet and wishing to leave would have been threatened or even killed by their ‘co-workers’. So what is left in the city are a proportion of local Government supporters (hostages and ‘false flag’ fodder for the terrorists), a far bigger proportion of hardcore terrorists and their families, the ubiquitous contingent of ‘White Helmets’, and probably a reluctant few ‘rebels’ who would rather not be there.
This may interest you – currently £1.89 on Amazon kindle edition
The Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq
by Emma Sky SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2016
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2015
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unravelling-High-Hopes-Missed-Opportunities-ebook/dp/B00SETWSLI?_bbid=10576070&tag=bookbubblog-21
SKWIPALS: not.
I didn’t mark it as such.
Advise readers not to waste their money. Ms Sky is a stooge for the USUKIsNATO axis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Sky
I always like to read all sides of a topic I am interested in, not just those that I know will agree with me. I feel it gives me a better perspective.
If the Dead Could Speak – mass deaths and torture at Syria’s detention facilities
https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/12/16/if-dead-could-speak/mass-deaths-and-torture-syrias-detention-facilities
A former inmate of the prison who was detained for participating in a peaceful non-violent protest told Amnesty International that at Sednaya prisoners were forced to choose between dying themselves or killing one of their own relatives or friends. The former inmate also stated that in the first prison he was at, prisoners were also forced into cannibalism, but that prison was “heaven” compared to Sednaya Prison. According to the inmate, the other prison (Branch 215) was “to interrogate” (including through torture), but when that was done, you were moved to Sednaya “to die”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sednaya_Prison
———————————
Yet here we are on an alleged human rights blog where all of this is denied, excused and supported.
Amazing that while holding nearbyChristian villages the warriors of Abu Jihad,aka Oppenheim, meant no effort to liberate the prison,see Craig’s blog in spring this year.
‘made’ no effort.Sorry.
There we go. As long as Assad is opposed to the West then every evil perpetrated by him and his henchmen must be denied, excused or supported. Really you’re not human right activists at all, just anti-West propagandists and apologists for brutal regimes.
But he’s not opposed to the West. That’s why he allowed rendition flights. He did however approve an Iranian gas pipeline. Tut tut.
You misread opposition to your beloved head-choppers and heart-munchers entirely. The point is that some people want to see Syria maintain its integrity as a functioning state. That’s all. They don’t want to see it turned into another Iraq or Libya. No-one gives a damn about Assad (apart from the Syrian people of course, with whom he is very popular).
In that case you would admit to the full extent of Assad’s crimes. But you can’t do it. You have to pretend they’re all faked. That’s the difference between me and you.
Far from supporting headchoppers I actually agree that it is better to have a devil like Assad in charge than a failed state. But unlike you I am under no illusion as to the evil of the Syrian regime. Anyone opposed to Assad is butchered, even peaceful protesters.
You cant/won’t admit that anyone opposed to the West can be substantially more evil than the West. You on the far left have been doing this for decades, defending every crook, despot and tyrant going because they are opposed to the West and/or backed by mother Russia.
I have made no claims of fakery. I know nothing about conditions on the ground in Syria either now or before. That’s one thing we have in common. I do however consider maintaining the integrity of the Syrian state to be matter of concern to us all. That’s one reason why I pay no attention to idiotic ad hominem attacks.
“I have made no claims of fakery”
Oh my God. You’ve been on this site for years. Every single thing that happens that doesn’t accord with your world view is denounced as a fake, false-flag or conspiracy if some sort. Every terrorist attack. Every action of every filthy regime you support because it is opposed to the West. Get out of here.
“In that case you would admit to the full extent of Assad’s crimes.”
The Yorkshire Ripper would often point out the crimes of his victims in defence of his greater crimes.
And you’re clearly a gullible idiot who swallows every tiny teaspoon of propaganda given to you by Nanny at bedtime – and several times during the day as well. You make me sad.
Above was a reply to Anon1 at 14:47
Anon 1
Did you read the report?
“apologists for brutal regimes”- that just about sums you up in relation to your unquestioning and glib defence of Is^ael, the USA and the UK.
Is that the same place where the CIA used to send detainees for extraordinary rendition?
Not that I know of. And if it was I’m sure it wasn’t used for forcing peaceful protesters to shoot their families and eat people.
“shoot their families and eat people”?? Where on earth did you dig that up from? Please provide the evidence form a legitimate, reputable source. It’s only Al Qaeda who indulge in that sort of atrocity and been filmed doing it.
Human Rights Watch? You must be as credulous as my 6 year old.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/14/the-bias-of-human-rights-watch/
Ah yes it’s all faked.
What is certainly faked is the concern for universal human rights affected by HRW and people like this guy…..
John McCain: In Memorium|Human Rights Watch
“Senator McCain was for decades a compassionate voice for US foreign and national security policy,” said Sarah Margon, Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “He was never shy about his commitment to basic rights and frequently confronted global leaders directly about their repression and abuse”
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/08/26/john-mccain-memoriam
Human Rights Watch and other such organisations are subject to manipulation, eg. the World Wildlife Fund encouraged to support such a comprehensive fishing ban that the Chagossians could never return to the subsistence farming of their home island.
But do not write these organisations off, as they are the best we have. Same goes for projects like Wikipedia. Better to join them and make your mark.
A female palestinian medic deliberately sniped to death is the only sufficient answer to your fascistic impulses here.
I can’t imagine any gain Israel could make from deliberately shooting a medic. Do you want to tell me that Assad’s career of brutally torturing and murdering tens of thousands of innocent civilians is all an accident? No you would be better off denying it ever happened. Tell us it was all faked using crisis actors and fake blood.
Asad the brutal carreerist was an optician – did he rip out eyeballs after strapping in his victims! Mwahaa ha ha.
You have not responded to the detailed history by Caitlin Johnstone and the US senator of the decades long plan to conquest in the ME?
If this ff WH debacle proceeds will you be doing your little bit to promote it?
Following orders is not a defence since the Nazis tried it.
“He couldn’t have done all these things – he’s just an optician!”
Clown.
Syria had one of the least-bad human rights problems in the region until the Gulf Monarchies and NATO Turkey got the Western green light and a billion or so dollars to trash the place.
Do you want supremacy for Saudi Arabia, Anon1? Wahhabism is your favourite direction for Islam to take? Now why might that be?
Rubbish, it had an appalling human rights record. You seem to have forgotten that this all started when Assad’s henchmen brutally crushed peaceful protests and murdered civilians opposed to his regime.
No I don’t want the spread of Saudi Wahabbism any more than the brutality of Assad’s regime.its not one side or the other, Clark (except of your an alleged human rights activist on this blog).
Btw do cut out the patronizing italics, you’re not a teacher.
– “this all started when Assad’s henchmen brutally crushed peaceful protests”
I’m pretty sure that’s untrue. There was little news coming out of Syria at the time, but there were reports of armed, violent demonstrations from the start; here’s one:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/143026
and we have reliable evidence that the US and UK had been encouraging instability for several years before violence broke out, see this link from a comment above, and the issues it raises which you chose to ignore earlier. Each “here is” is a link to evidence in the article itself:
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/that-time-cnn-staged-a-fake-interview-with-a-syrian-child-for-war-propaganda-beb0142b8176
– Here is a 2006 WikiLeaks cable in which the US government is seen exploring possible factions which could be incentivized to rise up against Assad, and ways in which psyops could be used to ensure widespread violence.
Here is a declassified CIA memo from 1986 in which the Central Intelligence Agency is seen exploring ways in which sectarian tensions can be inflamed to provoke a violent uprising in Syria. Here is a useful article featuring excerpts from the memo showing some jarring parallels between what was being planned and what happened a quarter century later.
Here is a video clip of General Wesley Clark naming Syria among the countries scheduled by the Pentagon for regime change in the wake of 9/11.
Here is a video clip of the former Foreign Minister of France stating in plain language that he was informed by British government insiders in 2009 that a violent Syrian uprising was being planned, two years before the violence erupted.
Here is an article featuring a video of the former Qatari Prime Minister stating that the US and its allies were involved in the violence from the very beginning.
Here is an article from May of 2011 reporting on some of the extremely suspicious provocations that led to the outbreak of widespread violence. Here’s another from March 2011. Here’s another from December 2011.
Anon 1 – Best you find out the difference between an ‘optician’ and an ‘ophthalmologist’.
Erm, I was quoting Dungroanin….
It’s possible for opposition to a bad government to be no better, and for external intervention to make things even worse. In this case it seemed local protest was quickly swamped by well armed outsiders with their own agenda. Life isn’t all goodies Vs baddies ….
Have you any idea where the HRW got their ‘evidence ‘ from to make those accusations? The Caesar (code name) defector. On closer inspection some photographs of the same person had different case numbers. Many dead were identified as SAA soldiers. It was a fraud that quickly got forgotten, apart from the widely discredited and biased HRW. Do you really think the MSM would have ignored the story since if it had any legs to it?
“These things make Assad look bad. They must have been faked!”
Anon1,
I arrived late to this party. Could you post links to ‘these things’ so I can judge for myself?
Regards,
Dave
The entire body of evidence for Assad’s human rights abuses collected by Human Rights Watch.
Fake. Fake photographs, fake accounts, fake bodies. The whole thing faked apparently.
How do we know this? Because it makes Assad look bad and that can’t be right.
Anon1, is it just bad stuff about Assad that cannot be faked? What about good stuff? Can that be faked, or is everything we read about the man de facto true? Or is it just the bad stuff? What about this? “Assad fucks goats”. That’s bad. Does it mean it has to be true, despite the fact that I just made it up?
Well yes, using photographs of government supporting SAA soldiers and producing images of the same person multiple times would bring into question the veracity of dossier in any reasonable persons mind. The most damning evidence as I’ve already mentioned is the fact that the mainstream media let the story drift away. More to the point, do you regard Kenneth Roth as trustworthy and believable because of his connection of the HRW or despite it? Like all the other charities and NGO’s it’s riddled with corruption and to be in it…You’ve got to be corrupt. In 2014 he got paid over half a million dollars. Most people would claim their grandma’s a serial killer for that kind of money.
Trying to provoke irritation? Where is it denied?
You’re obviously new around here.
Ive read Craig for a while, always interesting.
“A former inmate of the prison…” It starts with that and in your mind it becomes credible??? I read it and I know not to bother reading any further. Perhaps try and produce some evidence of objective origin that doesn’t sound like a White Helmet’s production (and if you think they are a legitimate force for the good then there really is no hope for you) or from the Daily Mail and we might start listening to you.
As for ‘shooting peaceful protesters’ it was interesting that on the BBC Lyse Doucet documentary on Syria even people involved in the infamous Clocktower (I think it was called?) protest, describing what happened, said that all was going well and in good spirits when ‘armed men’ suddenly appeared and shot people in the crowd. No mention specifically of policemen or uniforms. They then disappeared as quickly as they’d appeared. Reminiscent of Maidan, don’t you think?
What is the moderation policy on here, how can I find this information, anyone? Wading through the comments reveals stuff being redacted left and right. Not particularly offensive or even especially off topic stuff too. Can you ask for comments to be deleted when you wish you’d not made them? I’m not especially bothered, just curious what is the policy.
Thanks anyone..
It all seems a bit ad hoc, which is fair enough
Moderation policy here:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/06/moderation-rules-commenters/
And an older version here:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/06/some-rules-for-comment-moderation/
Ad-hoc deletions are probably under the “Address arguments, not people” rule. And if you want the comment stream; here:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/comments/feed/
That was a rapier riposte, thanks!
I do not believe that the US government, or any of its agencies, were responsible for 9/11. It would just need too many people to be involved. Someone would have objected. Craig Murray 2010
As the F-UK-US alliance plan to defend Al Qaeda in Syria we have to ask is this still Craig’s opinion?
As linked recently, GLADIO gives us an historical precedent where large conspiracies against home populations have continued in secret for decades without being revealed, so I do not accept the premise of Craig’s dismissal here.
https://medium.com/@tomsecker/gladio-revisited-state-sponsored-terrorism-in-the-mono-polar-world-order-ef0a8a68432b
If Craig has private suspicions that the Al Qaeda-as-perpetrators narrative is not the full and complete story he should make his views known now. Uncovering the true origin of this era of 21st century war is all that can stop it spiralling out of control.
And now we’re on to the 9/11 conspiracies….
Must be a full moon.
The lunacy non-argument was dead many moons ago.
Although not a topic for polite conversation, nor a widely recognized ‘acceptable’ issue for mainstream academics and journalists, the issue of 9/11 and the multiple questions that persist with respect to this transformative event continue to bubble under the surface.
Professor Dr Piers Robinson Chair in Politics, Society and Political Journalism, University of Sheffield
https://off-guardian.org/2018/09/10/9-11-unmasked-by-david-ray-griffin-and-elizabeth-woodworth-a-review/
http://littleatoms.com/russia-today-piers-robinson
Yawn.
“”Everything on the BBC is 100% accurate, balanced, impartial and gives full context.””
You are one of the last of a dying breed Anon, and if you are not employed in the state/corporate media yourself (as Reidy is) you must at least be aware of dwindling support for the religion of the ‘Western free press’.
The weak forces of little atoms cannot stop the storm force of a waking population.
Anon1
September 11, 2018 at 16:34
Little Atoms Come on now.Published by 89up Ltd.
Just a new No61 You fall for that you will fall for anything.
‘Must be full moon’
Nope, its your bare backside reflecting the light on this blog, anon1.
Now calm down and take your blue pills.
btw. Have you paid any taxes the last few years you’ve been pestering the air her?
Doubtless if Trump were on flight 93, he would have personally saved the day, just like if he had been outside the Stoneman Douglas High School he would have rushed in unarmed and taken on the gunman.
Sharp Ears,
I never turn the TV on.
Why is that interesting? Trump also thinks asbestos is safe, his dad was born in Germany and the California wild fires were made worse by not diverting all the water from Northern rivers into the irrigation canals servicing the Central Valley. Trump is an entitled, ignorant blow hard, who cheerfully blunders into technical subjects he knows hehaw about ’cause for decades he has surrounded himself with payed flunkies not motivated to tell the dumb twat to shut it.
Oh, but all that aviation fuel can’t have melted the steel girders! No it didn’t but it would have generated sufficient heat to soften the girders such that they couldn’t support their own weight. The girders were to some extent protected by a coating of asbestos “monkey dung” (fucking ‘orible stuff), but that wouldn’t survive the impact. In short, complex buildings do not tend to survive events they were not designed specifically to survive. Being a metallurgist, I know of what I speak.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE 52 STORY BUILDING 7 WORLD TRADE CENTRE? That wasn’t hit by a plane, collapsed like a pack of cards…
The live news reports on the day said bombs had exploded in the basements.
Mog, GLADIO was a NATO operation, so Craig’s dismissal of US agencies would still stand. Further, I don’t know how much operational freedom the actual fascist GLADIO cells were given, but to achieve maximum plausible deniability it was probably almost total, so that would make two degrees of separation from US agencies.
Clark,
The secret armies were set up by the CIA and MI6.
NATO is effectively a US agency anyway.
Don’t see your point.
OK the CIA and MI6 set them up, but (1) to what extent did they continue to control them and know what they were doing? and (2) to what extent did the secret armies know they were controlled by MI6 and the CIA?
I think NATO isn’t exactly a US department. A couple of days ago someone posted the link which follows. I do not agree with its overall argument because I think it is over-simplified, but it does make the point that a US presidential directive only became NATO policy due to 9/11:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Moz8hs2lJik
Don’t really see your point Clark. You are splitting imaginary hairs.
The history of GLADIO cuts against the principle which Craig drew upon to dismiss serious consideration of the evidence which contradicts the official narrative of 9/11; i.e. that large deep state crimes can continue without anyone blabbing about them – this can happen even in open liberal ‘democratic’ societies.
NATO is an international organisation that is and has always been dominated by the USA (+70% funding), I don’t think anyone would dispute that. How much the secret armies of the cold war were managed and funded through the various intelligence agencies and how much through the shaddowy corridors of NATO is somthing of a moot point unless you think that the CIA and MI6 were wholly uninvolved in NATO concerns, which is plainly ridiculous. Whether the far right groups were aware of their masters’ identity is also somewhat irrelevant in the realm where compartmentalisation is the norm.
I greatly value Craig’s work, but it is time for dissenting truthtellers to step forward and publicly state that the official account of 9/11 is wholly discredited. Time is running out for us all.
My point is about Craig’s argument. He wrote:
– “I do not believe that the US government, or any of its agencies, were responsible for 9/11. It would just need too many people to be involved. Someone would have objected. There are some strange and dangerous people in America, but not in sufficient concentration for this one. They couldn’t even keep Watergate quiet, and that was a small group. Any group I can think of – even Blackwater – would contain operatives with scruples about blowing up New York. They may be sadly ready to kill people in poor countries, but Americans en masse? Somebody would say it wasn’t a good idea”
“Blowing up”. He’s clearly saying that the CIA would not have sanctioned a scheme to pre-rig the WTC with explosives. He also wrote:
– “I do not rule out any point on the whole spectrum of surveillance, penetration and agent provocateur activity by any number of possible actors”
That’s very broad, and clearly would include attack by religious extremists, including those assisted by NATO Secret Services under Gladio B as revealed by Sibel Edmonds.
Craig wasn’t asking you to “dismiss serious consideration of the evidence which contradicts the official narrative” as you put it. He was trying to get readers to look and think more deeply than the silly and untenable fantasies that so-called 9/11 Truthers attempt to impose.
You wrote – “Whether the far right groups were aware of their masters’ identity is also somewhat irrelevant in the realm where compartmentalisation is the norm”
No, it’s highly relevant, because if they didn’t know who had been supporting them they would be more likely to unwittingly bite the hand that fed them. Compartmentalisation or “need to know” is a major enabler of blowback
– “it is time for dissenting truthtellers to step forward and publicly state that the official account of 9/11 is wholly discredited”
Huh. Most of the campaigners are shooting themselves in their own feet by pushing – indeed attempting to enforce – wholly discredited fantasies of their own. Craig tries to help, and you accuse him of what Truthers accuse every critical thinker of – “supporting the official story”.
And Donald Rumsfeld first suggested a missile at the Pentagon. It’s always best to find the sources of your conspiracy theories if you can.
Trump also said he would expose the perpetrators of 9/11 if he was elected. Just milking it, obviously, but I think it did help him.
Yes it was. But it was not mainly caused by two planes flying into buildings (they killed an unfortunate minority through impact and fire) in NYC and no aeroplane flew into the pentagon either.
People can argue ad nauseam about the true causes, but it is scientifically impossible for the official propaganda to be true.
The chief beneficiaries were: The State of Israel (as publicly aired by Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu); Larry Silverstein ($3bn+ profit claiming two insurance payouts and then rebuilding using leveraged debt); traders of put options; the military industrial complex; terrorists seeking to overthrow middle eastern governments; whoever benefited from $2.3trn embezzled from pentagon coffers with all records and back up copies destroyed on 9/11; blackmailers of the true perpetrators, especially if US officials were involved.
You should retract that about Larry Silverstein. On objective inspection of the known facts, Larry Silverstein’s property was used as a target of a major terrorist attack, and Silverstein himself could well have been killed. People he frequently worked with were killed. You’re listing a victim near the top of your beneficiaries. I suspect you to may be entertaining an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
I also think you should retract your vague, supposedly scientific claim. It implies the complicity of almost the entire international scientific, technical, academic and educational community, and gives vague support to assorted pseudoscience.
Looking how close they are to Al Qaeda today, they could easily have ‘assisted’ them 17 years ago.
Our NHS
Malcolm Grant is resigning as chair of NHS England. He was appointed by Lansley who put through the Health and Social Care Act 2012 which readied the NHS for privatisation. Previously he was the president and provost of UCL. Now Chancellor of the University of York. Pal of BLiar’s. He set up the warmongering outfit at UCL under John Reid – The Institute for Strategy, Resilience and Security. BLiar inaugurated it to massive protests from the students.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Grant
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/isrs/about/who
Grant is being replaced by Lord Prior, the current Lords spokesman for Business etc and son of Farmer Jim Prior. A Tory through and through. Previously he had the Health and Social Care portfolio where he pushed hard for the privatisation that is ongoing and ever increasing. He will be known to Nevermind as he was an MP for North Norfolk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Prior,_Baron_Prior_of_Brampton
Oh. Very cosy. I see he is the current chair of University College Hospital and attended Charterhouse like Hunt who was Head Boy there. Chair of this. One the board of that. Yet they have no shame and hold their heads up high. I have followed his activity throughout his tenure of the Health portfolio and in the Lords generally. The Tories there were supportive of the H&SC Act 2012. Many of them had and still have financial interests in private health companies.
A stench from the Augean stables, aka Pugin’s Palace –
‘Key Facts of interests in healthcare
The research looking into Lords and MPs connections to private healthcare through the register of interests is complete. Below are listed some of the key findings. Research into the murky and dangerous Health and Social Care bill is ongoing and more facts will be added here as and when they arise.’
http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.com/p/key-facts-of-lords-and-mps-connections.html
What an incestuous crowd.
Sharp Ears.
The police force in England and Wales, isn’t fairing any better, could be another service that might potentially end up privatised.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/police-crisis-crime-rise-uk-cuts-government-vision-future-superintendents-conference-a8529766.html
right on cue a bbc tv piece last night featured village families subscribing to a private monitoring service – three levels of service evidently
When looking up links to the NHS, I came across the IEA (Institute of Economic Affairs). It is a right wing think tank in neoliberal clothing and was set up by Lord Harris (Carpetright, Tory donor, Academy founder etc) and Sir Anthony Fisher*. It is headed by Mark Littlewood who used to spin for the LDs (an odious person)
Their spokeswoman is an American woman called Kate Andrews. She is often on Sky News ‘reviewing the papers’ and I have seen her on QT too. ‘ Privatisation Is Us.’ Always putting out the message in her sweet little American voice. https://iea.org.uk/staff/ She has a colleague, Hester Chesterfield, who I have also seen on Sky recently.
The IEA have a £2m income. Hintze is a trustee. https://iea.org.uk/trustees/
Hintze funded Liam Fox and Adam Werritty and is mega rich from his hedge fund and other activities.
Note the way he has wormed his way into society and the royal lot by use of funding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hintze
Craig Murray outed Fox, Werritty and Hintze. What was Fox’s reward for that evil? A job in May’s Tory cabinet. Gould’s? He became Ambassador to Israel 2010-15.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/02/gould-werritty-the-continuing-cover-up/
Matthew Steven Gould CMG MBE (born 20 August 1971) is a British diplomat who was Ambassador to Israel 2010–15. He is now Director General for Digital and Media Policy in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Perhaps he didn’t like Israel after all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Gould
They have all flourished.
* Fisher, also wealthy, founded several think tanks and was influential.
‘He was a co-founder of the Fraser Institute, the Manhattan Institute, the Pacific Research Institute, the National Center for Policy Analysis, the Centre for Independent Studies, and the Adam Smith Institute.
He was knighted four weeks before his death.
Personal life
He was married twice. He had four children with his first wife, including Linda Whetstone, who has been involved with many of Fisher’s think tanks. His granddaughter, Rachel Whetstone, serves as senior vice-president of communications and public policy for Uber. She is married to David Cameron’s former director of strategy Steve Hilton.’ YCMIU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Fisher
Correction. Wrong Lord Harris!
s/be
Ralph Harris, Baron Harris of High Cross (December 10, 1924 – October 19, 2006) was a British economist. He was head of the Institute of Economic Affairs from 1957 to 1987. The IEA’s brand of free market liberal economics was deeply unpopular when it was founded, but, some 20 years later, by combining the classical liberalism of the 18th and 19th centuries with Conservative principles, Harris became one of the men who invented Thatcherism.
He was a director of Rupert Murdoch’s Times Newspapers company from 1988 to 2001 and chairman of CIVITAS from 2000.)
They made their mark, particularly with Enoch Powell and other Tory rightwingers, by their series of easy-to-read pamphlets with snappy titles like Down With the Poor (1971) and The Challenge of the Radical Reactionary (1981), which helped shatter the Butskellite consensus at Westminster and create the intellectual climate for the emergence of Thatcher as the free-market successor to the interventionist Heath.
During Thatcher’s 1979-90 reign at No 10, the IEA was one of the government’s unofficial thinktanks. Another was the more restrained Centre for Policy Studies, set up by Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph.’
http://thinktank-watch.blogspot.com/2007/12/sir-anthony-fisher.html
Meanwhile over a thousand people were detained in Russia, by riot police, (mainly in St Petersburg) on Sunday. They were protesting against the increase in pension age.
You don’t do sarcasm, well not very well anyway, so I take it you’re now pro-Putin, or am I grabbing the wrong end of the red cow?
Yes there’s nothing so funny as the real thing. What was it you said after the terrorist attacks in France? That it was all CGI and crisis actors wasn’t it? I think I remember a comment on the colour of the blood being all wrong.
Not quite CGI, but not genuine either, the perps, along with the Kouachi brothers, conveniently left their passports for all to see.
Mind you France has the largest Muslim population in Europe, it wouldn’t be too difficult to recruit patsies, or outside triggermen who don’t look out of place.
No red cows I’m afraid, they’d stick out like a sore thumb.
I think it might be his carer’s day off today and important medication has not been taken.
I’m not the one who believes every crackpot conspiracy theory going, MJ.
Me neither. Isn’t it time for a lie down little chap?
Ok 98.4% of them.
Demos organised by that idiot Navalny. Detaining people was nothing to do with what they were demonstrating about. As we know, Navalny always makes a point of never bothering to get the legally required authorisation for such marches just so he can get a lot of publicity for himself and anti-Kremlin publicity…and it works in the West; they swallow it every time, hook, line and sinker. With regard to changes in pension ages, we would be justified in having such demos here.
Increase in pension age? What is that about, do you have a link?
Mary,
Here’s a link for you which gives the details of the proposals:
https://www.rt.com/politics/437452-russia-rallies-retirement-age/
Now then, will the Hague grow a pair and actually do something this time? Or has the Great Satan’s hatred of the ICC, finally cowered them into submission? Though in their defence the ICC might bring charges against US soldiers under warcrimes, we’ll just have to wait and see.
“The Palestinian leadership has petitioned the International Criminal Court in The Hague, calling on the court to start legal procedures against the State of Israel over Israeli actions at the West Bank Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Tuesday.”
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-palestinians-petition-icj-over-israeli-eviction-of-west-bank-village-1.6466053
An account of the boarding and capture of the Freedom Flotilla boats by the Israeli navy in international waters.
‘Gaza Freedom Flotilla 2018: Israel stole our boat & imprisoned us but we spoke up for Palestine
Richard Sudan is a London-based writer, political activist, and performance poet.
6th September 2018
The aim was simply to break the illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip by sea, using two boats made up of international activists carrying medical aid with the aim of donating the boats to Palestine’s fishing community.
Each activist ultimately, however, ended up in prison in Israel, with the two boats impounded in the Israeli port of Ashdod (joining many other small, regular Palestinian fishing vessels), with the medical aid on board confiscated. Any semblance of international law had been well and truly violated by Israel in international water. This is what happened.’
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/437762-gaza-flotilla-palestine-israel/
“The aim was simply to break the illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip by sea, using two boats made up of international activists carrying medical aid with the aim of donating the boats to Palestine’s fishing community.”
Wrong. The aim was to aggressively provoke Israel into a retaliation so that they could get media attention and circulate the sob story reproduced above. The last thing they wanted was to just peacefully offload some medical supplies and be gone without incident. Nobody would have heard about that.
“The last thing they wanted was to just peacefully offload some medical supplies and be gone without incident. Nobody would have heard about that.”
So why didn’t the Israelis just let them through? I thought these guys were the bright ones in this mess?
Perhaps they’re not quite as super intelligent as you Israel obsessives make them out to be with your never ending “J.ws rule the world” inferiority complex. Have you actually been to Israel? A lot of it barely functions.
Wow, A-S in one move, some kind of record.
Suffice to say, I’d have let them through. Wouldn’t you?
The Israelis have form. The Mavi Marmara flotilla which was boarded via helicopters 10 on board were killed and all possessions stolen and never returned. Craig – https://muslims4uk.com/2011/04/05/craig-murray-on-the-killing-of-cengiz-songur/
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2011/04/for-cengiz-songur/
The MV Dignity with 16 aboard, including Cynthia McKinney, plus supplies, was thrice rammed by Israeli gunships in the middle of the night in January 2008, 80 miles out in International waters. http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/12/30/gaza.aid.boat/index.html
Over and over the Israelis kill and injure. Israel has complete impunity.
Further to the comments on Syria above, I can’t see how anyone could regard the regime there as anything other than brutal. That applies regardless of who is the figurehead and probably since its creation as the country of Syria and maybe for a 1000+ years on a tribal level as their overlords came and went.
This kind of brutal regime seems to be the norm in the ME, applying to virtually all of the countries there from Libya in the west to Pakistan in the east and Turkey in the north to Yemen in the south. It just seems to be the way they operate their societies, a bit like us 4-500 years ago and I suspect stems in part from the type of religion that the rulers practice and use to maintain power.
Whether the West actually regards it as evil or not and attacks them verbally or militarily seems to depend on the US relationship with them and their support for the petro$ or US policies. Threaten that and the bombs descend (Libya, Iraq) or ISIS (Syria) arrives.
“Whether the West actually regards it as evil or not and attacks them verbally or militarily seems to depend on the US relationship with them and their support for the petro$ or US policies. Threaten that and the bombs descend (Libya, Iraq) or ISIS (Syria) arrives.”
There in lies the definition of a dictator in Western eyes. Iraq, Iran Syria bad, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain good.
What religion informed these actions?:
In 2014 the award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh told the ACLU about the existence of classified Pentagon evidence files containing films of U.S-“global policeman” soldiers sodomizing Iraqi boys in front of their mothers behind the walls of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. “You haven’t begun to see [all the] … evil, horrible things done [by U.S. soldiers] to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run,” Hersh told an audience in Chicago.
JohninMK
Thank you for a very well thought out contribution and observation. It is of interest to note context in everything. The recent history of the ME (say the last 100 years) has seen much brutalisation of the local population and not exclusively by thier rulers. Remember that Churchill in 1923 gassed the Kurds and Iraqis. They have prior to that been subject to the Ottoman empire with its own atrocities, followed by artificial division by the British and French in order to form pliant states. In so doing, they forced various kings artificially chosen by these occupiers, and gave away the land of some of them to people of European descent without consideration of the local people. Those previous occupying countries then tried to make sure that the predominant rulers are islamic fundamentalists and fought openly and covertly to upset any nationalist rulers. Countries such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Egypt, who were the most socially advanced were often undermined and this type of covert and overt interference inevitably leads to entrenchment and encourages development of strong rulers with dictatorial tendency.
In all of this the Arabs have never invaded other countries outside thier region, never committed mass murder on others, never exported state sponsored terror in the scale that has been visited on them.
I am sorry if my comment is not as erudite as yours but this may be related perhaps to our different perspectives.
The Ba’ath party and the Assad dynasty are indeed capable of employing devastating force when under existential threat. The current Assad’s uncle Rifat al Assad surrounded the old city of Hama with its Sunni colleges with heavy artillery in 1982 and flattened it with the population in situ. Casualties (mostly civilian) are estimated in the range 10 to 40 thousand. Rifat later blotted his copy book with his elder brother by brazen plunder of the national reserves.
The thing is, Rifat (by far a bigger bastard than his nephew) current lives the life of a multi millionaire in the SE of England.
Who would you rather see in power in Syria? A periodically violent Ba’ath party that respects all religions and ethnic identities, or a fundamentalist Sunni hegemony persecuting all that do not adhere to their dictates?
Re Rifat al Assad, he’s made the DM today: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3057557/Bashar-al-Assad-s-uncle-investigation-France-64m-fortune-despite-kicked-Syria-30-years-ago.html
Hard to imagine that the Uk had great relations with this sporn of evil, isnt it MK Jonny.
We thought that buttering him up might play well in future. Now he is the great satan who does not want the primitive Wahabi lovers to punch their pipeline through his country.
I know, lets take it away from him, even if that means that those other primitive Schmucks nick some more land in the process
Care to define “brutal” and give objective examples? It sounds convincing when the MSM use it until you actually try to analyse what people who use the term mean by it. Just checked numbers of Syrian opposition groups and affiliated rebel groups many of whom, as we know, are extremist murdering scum who will target the other opposition forces as well as Syrian Government officials, military and police, and anyone else who dares to voice support for the Government. At the last count (give or take one or two who may have united or evolved into a different group name) there were 39 official opposition groups and an additional 61 affiliated rebel groups. How do you think Theresa May would get on with managing that lot…do you think she would be declared ‘brutal’? They would certainly provide a lucrative income for drone manufacturers and security firms.
Not content with imposing its Citizens Credit Score, (where if you’re a good little obedient citizen, who believes everything, and does everything you’re told to, you’ll gain better medical care, education for children etc). China is now planning to co-op religion in the country in its entirety.
Anyone wanting to put religious information online will need to obtain a licence to do so, from their nearest Provincial Religious Affairs department.
While the licence will enable them to “preach and offer religious training”, they will not be allowed to live-stream or broadcast religious activities.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/2163706/china-plans-licence-system-crack-down-chaotic-online-promotion
RoS
Last year I asked a Chinese student what she knew about God, the divine being who created the universe and operates it in real time. For my pains I got kicked out of my job and subjected to some very intensive surveillance for a time. China has a long historical connection to first Christianity and then Islam through the trading route of the Silk Road, which is the main subject of the 8 years of war in Syria.
China knows better than you or I the missionary purposes of the British and now the US fundamentalist Christians, i.e. you get the book and we get the land. Given the choice between the Citizens Credit Score and the worship of a human being, if I was China, I know which one teaches personal responsibility, like Islam, and which one teaches do what you like and somebody else will vicariously pick up your sins.
The problem is deep, because every single human soul is born with the fitra or intuition that God is One and in charge of our own lives and the lives of all other beings. Against that even the Chinese state itself must appear puny, and Chinese students have been known to rebel against the authority of the state. For instance when they were told not to have relationships with foreigners who might infiltrate China, Chinese students mocked the state’s Government health warning and indulged in “dangerous” relationships with foreign persons.
In short, however much Chinese people play the game, they also play against the game. That’s one of the reasons that China is so vibrant today, because disobedience to Maoist authoritarianism is almost universal. The human breast cannot be contained by something so oppressive as communism, or such an imposter as State religion. We should know because we spend every day rebelling against the oppression of the Capitalist religion, worship of Mammon/Market forces and the bonkers teachings of Christianity, i.e. proxy forgiveness of sins by a human being.
giyane states “disobedience to Maoist authoritarianism is almost universal”. I was in China from Jan 2003 for over two years, at which time there was little disapproval of Beijing that I saw or heard of. Against Mao himself, the most dissent I heard was the popular 70%/30% platitude. The almost blasphemous notion that Mao was 30% wrong was the closest I heard to a criticism of his legacy.
I spent time in Xi’an, Shenzhen, Kunming, and was based in Chongqing so my experience was very different from the majority of laowai (foreigners/expats) in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou or even Chengdu.
I am curious to know if the place has really changed quite that much in the 13 years since I was there. The bourgeoisie has been burgeoning and flourishing at an exponential rate in the meanwhile, but significant civil disobedience on any level would be a step-change away from my experience.
Is the outsize oil painting of the Chairman still proudly watching over Tiananmen? Curious to know more of your expulsion and surveillance experience, giyane. Were you in TEFL in China?
I apologise in advance if this has been posted before
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2018/09/08/the-battle-for-syrias-last-rebel-redoubt-looms
It is interesting that on the 17th anniversary of 911, the economist is worried about the same terrorists that carried out the atrocities of 911 and is now calling them rebels.
This post is particularly dedicated to Anon1, Charlie and Kempe who are encouraged to comment constructively.
Sorry SA, Anon1 is busy defending genocide above
Building a settlement isn’t genocide you moron.
Unless “building a settlement” is a code for genocide.
Or the fact you’ve been building them since 1948. One wonders where all the genuine residents ended up, six feet under I presume.
Taking somebody’s land to build these settlements, pulling out very old olive trees, killing those who demonstrate peacefully are all steps to genocide. Do we have to wait until the genocidal tendencies actually fulfill thier aim before calling them by thier true name?
Building a settlement isn’t genocide you moron.
Killing a person isn’t genocide either.
However conducting a policy of building settlements and killing people, targeted at a specific ethnic population, with the aim of driving them from their country, is.
Building a settlement isn’t genocide you moron.
Anyway, we were going to discuss the relevance of genocide after we had agreed on whether my description of Isra*li agriculture methods is accurate. Here it is again :
Build an illegal settlement on Palestinian land. Encourage armed settlers to terrorise the local Palestinians. Send in the IDF to protect the settlers. Shoot anyone who protests, including children. Burn, uproot and plough ancient olive groves. Build a farm settlement instead. Shoot anyone who protests, including children. Replace the olive trees with avocados and irrigate them by diverting all the accessible water in the area. Poison and pollute any springs that can’t be diverted. Shoot anyone who protests, including children.
Again, I ask you : If you dispute any part of my description, please specify.
And answer there came none? Does that mean that he agrees with you?
Well he can’t rationally disagree with me, so it looks like he’s slunk off with his tail between his legs. But we shouldn’t be too hard on him, he does more to publicise Isra*l’s brutality than anyone else on this blog.
Its called stealing land, but fascists would not see it like that.
Wasn’t it “their” land, several thousand years ago?
“Wasn’t it “their” land, several thousand years ago?”
Any deeds or DNA evidence of this?
The regime in Syria may be brutal, but the people had running water, electricity, houses, food, schools, hospitals, roads, sewerage systems, communities and living friends and loved ones.
“We” are trying to destroy all that, just like we did in Iraq and Libya, and would dearly love to do to Iran.
Yes and to be fair Hitler made the trains run on time. Also did you see how good the motorways were?
Your answer as often is a non sequitur. Hitler invaded many countries, believed in Aryan supremacy and committed genocides against certain groups as well as made trains run on time. As far as I know Bashar al-Assad never thought to rule over other nations and commit genocide against any ethnic groups. Try to argue properly Anon 1 and with logic not empty rhetoric.
Anon believes that this also applies to those in the ME who claim to be superior to international law, ignore Human rights and think hommous is ‘ an Ottolenghi invented dish’.
Poor mut.
What a bizarre place this blog has become
Mussolini.
Hitler only managed to make the trains run on time in “Greater Germany” – he had rather less luck not only with trains but with all other forms of transportation in Russia.
You want the “subhumans” to live like livestock, don’t you?
I think you mean Mussolini. Advise you to lie down and have a rest. Sorry your best mate isn’t backing you up today.
“Yes and to be fair Hitler made the trains run on time.”
That was Mussolini, Hitler was, as you rightly point out, the roads man.
If the Syrian “people had running water, electricity, houses, food, schools, hospitals, roads, sewerage systems, communities and living friends and loved ones” then how can the regime be “brutal”?
Oh look we have one in complete denial here^
As soon as the Ba’ath party took over in 1963 they imposed a state of emergency law which permitted the government to make preventive arrests and override constitutional and penal code statutes. The law barred detainees who hadn’t been charged from filing court complaints or from having a lawyer present during interrogations. Tens of thousands disappeared.
This state of emergency continued for 48 years until Assad lifted it in the face of the protests which led to the current conflict. Independent reports suggest that things haven’t really improved much.
“Independent reports state that things haven’t really improved much”. Perhaps you would care to give an example of an independent report and where the information in it came from. Too often, I hear people refer to ‘independent reports’ to support an argument but then find that their sources of information are anything but ‘independent’. Raymond Hinnebusch on Syria is a case in point: gathers ‘evidence’ from anti-Assad mouthpieces, puts it all together in one volume and declares it an independent evaluation.
Well the pro-Assad mouthpieces aren’t going to say much about their man’s human rights record are they?
Any independent source I put up you’re just going to denounce as a CIA/MOSSAD/MI6 asset and ignore without reading so what would be the point?
Maybe you can explain Assad’s justification for maintaining a state of emergency for 48 years?
Kempe,
Please do provide a link to an ‘independent source’. It was when someone on another forum recommended that I read Raymond Hinnebusch to see how ‘evil’ Assad is, and I did, that I realised how partisan his record of what he’d read elsewhere or been told was – even if he himself wasn’t. Among other omissions there was no mention in it at all about the fact that in 2011 the ‘moderate, peaceful rebels’ were murdering policemen and their families and their own neighbours if they voiced support for the Government and it was then that the Govt decided that they could no longer be passive. So please do – I’m more than willing to give it a go.
And re-reading your previous last sentence “This state of emergency continued for 48 years until Assad lifted it in the face of the protests which led to the current conflict.”, it seems to me that you’ve answered your own question as to why they had a ‘state of emergency for 48 years’ and why they may have been misguided in succumbing to pressure to agree to lift it.
Hah! So you admit that Assad needed the state of emergency to keep the population under control. If that isn’t oppression I don’t know what is!
Kempe (16.25)
“Hah!”?? – of course I profess that was the case – that’s why I said it.
We’re talking about completely different types of cultures and psyches in the ME where many of these lunatics don’t need any justification for committing murder – they are not pleasant, civilised human beings, even the ones who purport to be respectable professionals. I take it that in this ‘idealistic’ world you live in you’re clearly quite happy for suspected terrorists to be given the freedom to commit their murderous atrocities before anyone has the right to detain them? How many of the terrorists who have committed murder in Europe and elsewhere were already on the intelligence services ‘radar’? But the authorities had to wait for them to commit murder before being able to do anything about them. Multiply that situation up several thousand fold in Syria alone and you can see what those in the Syrian Government were trying to keep under control. And it was a case of oppressing the minority to protect the rights of the vast majority to live freely and not be subject to true genocide. If it was so bad for the majority of Syrians in Syria for so many decades then perhaps you might care to explain why there wasn’t such insurrection, or overt criticism by ‘the West’ until 2011?
Kempe, Sep 11, 17:46: – “This state of emergency continued for 48 years until Assad lifted it in the face of the protests which led to the current conflict”
Didn’t take long for our side’s jihadists and pre-primed local agitators to pounce, did it? But then it had all been set up in the years preceding the protests, as evidence now confirms.
Kempe, Sep 11, 20:45 – “Maybe you can explain Assad’s justification for maintaining a state of emergency for 48 years?”
You’re conflating the current Assad with his father, and, outrageously, failing to credit Bashar with relaxing the restrictions. The sudden outbreak of armed, violent uprising would seem to provide the justification; Bashar relaxed the oppression and exactly that which his father had maintained them for very promptly occurred.
I shouldn’t be reading this. It is seriously affecting my faith in humanity, and the basic goodness of the human race. I now realise that us British, have been rather vile, throughout most of our recorded history, but I was unaware of most of it until relatively recently.
Who is the most vile now? The jihardist head choppers – or The British Government, The British Media, and The British Special Forces and Intelligence Services, who have been training, funding, arming and brainwashing – the Islamist headchoppers?
Why did they do it? For what purpose or benefit?
They now seem to be getting even worse. Whilst the media is drowning us in complete irrelevance re who the politicians are shagging or dancing with – do you think I could hive a sh1t? The British Government – are bringing us to the Brink of Human Extinction – via Nuclear War.
Read this and puke – preferably over Boris & Theresa. They are even worse than Blair, and I didn’t think that possible. Blair was responsible for killing a few Million innocent people but he didn’t kill the entire human race. These lunatics will, if no one complains and stops them.
“Jihadi, Inc. Cornered Like Rats in Idlib. What to do With Them?”
https://www.sott.net/article/395509-Jihadi-Inc-Cornered-Like-Rats-in-Idlib-What-to-do-With-Them
Tony
I have more than an inkling of your passion in what you say. I read the late Clarissa Dickson-Wright’s (Two Fat Ladies) autobiography “Spilling the Beans” in which she mentions Tony Blair from her Bar days around 1970. He was known as Miranda, and was regarded as a Walter Mitty character even then. She went on to say she met him when she had become famous on telly, and he was PM. She said she had never more strongly felt she was truly in the company of a psychopath.
It’s a rollicking good read, I recommend you read it.
Sounds like a good read, but unfortunately I haven’t got the time. Does she say anything about Blair in the music business in Notting Hill, or hint at anything to do with the rumour that he got a criminal conviction for what he did in a public toilet but used the name “Charles Lynton”? Perhaps he stood on his “Miranda rights”?
It’s a surprisingly slim volume, readable in a longish evening. Clarissa had a remarkable life, or more accurately three remarkable lives. Called to the Bar in 1970, she was the youngest woman to do so, a record which stood until very recently. Shortly after, she inherited a fortune from her mother (£2.8million 1975=£100 million now). She pissed it all up the wall, and was almost dead by 40.
The book is filled with extraordinary revelations, which you sensed were entirely genuine, she had no axes to grind and was completely peace with herself.
For the Blair revelations alone worth a look. He comes in for considerable opprobrium, and was a narcissistic bellend, especially in his youth.
Aren’t we all, but he then got considerably worse. You will enjoy it; make time!
OK, you and James talked me into it. Just bought a used copy in vg condition for £1.99 incl postage off eBay. Here’s another :
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VERY-GOOD-Spilling-the-Beans-Dickson-Wright-Clarissa-Book/113224530061?epid=86772978&hash=item1a5cb5388d:g:hXwAAOSw-3FZAYk~
@Tony
Who is the most vile now? The jihardist head choppers – or The British Government, The British Media, and The British Special Forces and Intelligence Services, who have been training, funding, arming and brainwashing – the Islamist headchoppers?
Why did they do it? For what purpose or benefit?
By far the most common reason for killing a person is because the killer has been told to do it. It’s not belief in something, or self-defence, or anger. OK so we have a hierarchy. What’s that about? The answer is that at the top it’s always about money, rich greedy c***s making profits.
Two angles which absolutely MUST be understood together: the boss system, the system in which people get bossed around; and the money system, in which capitalists seek and get profits.
Bullsh*t about “democracy” obscures the first; bullsh*t about “economic freedom” obscures the second.
– “By far the most common reason for killing a person is because the killer has been told to do it”
And funded, armed, trained, and organised into teams in a hierarchical command structure.
But I must defend hierarchy. It is one of the essential systems of organisation. The filing system in a library or on a computer is a hierarchy, and in groups of people, hierarchy is an essential structure for collating information and organising collective action. But like any powerful technique, it can be used or abused. Hierarchy itself is not the problem.
Dominance is the problem, and the urge to dominate is, unfortunately, inevitable in social animals, including humans. It can be tempered by disciplined self-inspection to recognise it, along with conscious choice over behaviour.
Tony hi, i’m impressed by your deflatiion at finding out it is us, brits who have been at the forefront of the Syria shit show. I’d have thought that had been obvious from the many links presented by commentators on this site. I have benefitted greatly.
Do you not yet know the direct MOD/MI links? I could post some if you could bear to know more.
Chin up you are not alone.
It is quite natural for a conservative to oppose the ICC, and all things being equal, the right thing to do, as no country could sensibly allow an international court to have jurisdiction over its leaders and military. War itself is the crime, so its a bit of nonsense to prosecute certain acts of war as war crimes and of course it never happens, unless its victors justice as at Nuremburg which was an inevitable show trial.
The idea of international rules and everyone playing by the rules is a good aspiration, but they can’t be enforced impartially by an international body without an army of its own, which no doubt would be committing war crimes if they tried to enforce the rules. The way of the world is there will be peace unless someone thinks they can get away with war, and as we know the Globalists promote perpetual war for profit, due to, for now, but ebbing, US military superiority.
Hence why in practice the ICC is an instrument of the Globalists and they got the idea from their forebears in the Soviet Union. The ICC is intended to excuse the war crimes by one side (the aggressor) with the veneer of legal prosecution of the war crimes of the other side, without the Globalist war crimes being mentioned, as at Nuremburg.
The irony is John Bolton the Globalist warmonger wants to discard the ICC which is an essential tool of partisan Globalist war propaganda, because he doesn’t want to be prosecuted by the ICC, when of course, like Blair, he never will be, until the defeat of Globalism under the guise of US.
Was Nuremberg a show trial? Or did it define circumstances whereby an entire state can become illegal? Obviously with current events in South Africa it is now necessary for Communists and anarchists to seek to undermine the rationale behind the Nuremberg trials – something they have been remarkably silent about for over 70 years.
Still consider the alternative. Stalin was not bothered about any “show trials” he just wanted to kill people and proposed to Churchill that they start by executing 40,000 junior officers in the Wehrmacht. Anit if funny how Communists always go for the highest possible number when it comes to murdering people.
The ‘trials’ were obviously a theatrical means to clear history and allow a future (business). Individuals, foot-soldiers were not tried as if they were somehow not responsible for what they did and senior officers who didn’t, in many cases, actually kill anyone. Russia differed in it’s response because for them it was an existential threat – invasion, unlike the UK and US.
Was Nuremberg a show trial?
Yes, of course Nuremburg was a show trial. That doesn’t mean most of the defendants weren’t guilty. Most murderers holding official positions in the German state didn’t get tried for anything and were re-employed in state service after a few years.
“Stalin was not bothered about any ‘show trials’ he just wanted to kill people and proposed to Churchill that they start by executing 40,000 junior officers in the Wehrmacht.”
You may be unaware of the Khabarovsk show trials of Japanese defendants. Churchill was a mass murderer and if he said “no” then that was expedience only, not scruple.
At Nuremberg the scope of the trials was carefully limited to focus on categories of crimes that Germany had committed but that the Allies had not committed. This created huge problems for the lawyers.
Up until World War II, it was generally accepted that attacking and killing innocent civilians, by bombing them in towns and cities for example, was the most heinous of all crimes.
A meaningful trial of war criminals in 1945, then, would of course be expected to look at stuff like that but there was an obvious problem; Britain and the US were as guilty (probably more guilty) as anyone when it came to killing and attacking civilians. Think Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Tokyo, to name but a few examples…
It is on the basis of the above that we can say with absolute conviction that the Nuremberg trials were a charade of sorts.
There’s more we could say on this in regards to which country and who was the first to decide that cities and civilians were to be considered legitimate targets during WWII. Needless to say, it’s a subject that most standard history books do not struggle with at all…
Today, as in 1945, the emphasis is strictly on how civilians happened to be killed (by the enemy) and the distinct “evilness” and cruelty of those responsible. Wider general questions on the legitimacy and morality of killing civilians are considered rather thorny and kept out of the frame.
The same standards are being applied in Syria right now, just as they were applied in Iraq and everywhere else. Basically our way of killing civilians is moral — that’s all we need to know.
How strange to be so seemingly well informed and yet omit any mention to the number of civilians killed by Russians. Whatever happened to Prussia? I really can’t recall.
Anyway keep it up, for as you all know it is absolutely imperative to demolish the rationale behind Nuremberg in order to free up tour consciences for the coming slaughter in South Africa.
“Death to all those who would whimper and cry” – but what happens if Boers turn out to be like Russians and take a pass on the whimpering and crying and just kill everyone that gets in their way. I bet good money that under such circumstances there will be a quick return to demanding that the law be observed and enforced.
“Up until World War II, it was generally accepted that attacking and killing innocent civilians, by bombing them in towns and cities for example, was the most heinous of all crimes.”
That’s a pretty short time window, considering that aerial bombing was only invented in WW I. Prior to that, it was considered perfectly within the “rules of war” to sack a town or city that had held out to the end and had been taken by storm, including “attacking and killing innocent civilians” and raping them too, if they were women.
The carefully choreographed firestorm in Hamburg, the successful outcome of an overnight Allied aerial bombardment in Summer ’43 , code Gomorrah, killed more civilians than the entire Nazi “blitz” attacks on London over ca two years. Bomber Command was by then entirelt out of control at least from an ethical standpoint, which amorality escalated until war’s end two years later, with Little Boy and Fat Man being the last hurrah of this brutish, cruel and beastly policy.
Not our finest hour. The bastards had to be defeated, but there was much unconscionable wickedness by the Allies, pure unfettered revenge.
As Gore Vidal pointed out, the Nippons were in fact ready to surrender in 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki represent the first pre-emptive strike (against the Bolshevik Soviet/Stalin) in history. It didn’t shorten the war by three years etc, but was meant to send a warning message to Uncle Joe.
Madness, horrible ugly vile and beastly human nature at its most grotesque. Total war is awful.
Bayard, I didn’t hinge the statement on aerial attacks alone.
You’ll struggle to find examples in say the last 500 years of European history where it was official military, government, or crown policy to systematically kill innocent civilians en masse in towns or cities.
It did happen occasionally, during The 30 Years War for example, but when you look into the decision-making behind it and the scale you’ll find they are almost all localised, relatively small scale, and exceptions to the norm.
Loony, I don’t think you quite understand. I’m not arguing against the principles of Nuremberg. I like them, want to uphold them, and want to see them applied more broadly.
Try and keep up.
Loony, I have no idea what you mean when you ask what happened to Prussia. Maybe you mean Eastern Prussia which was disjointed.
As for the Russians, it’s estimated that they lost about 20 million civilians during WWII. From memory I think Britain suffered about 50 to 60 thousand civilians killed.
At no point will you find me arguing that Russia up until, during, or after the WWII was some bastion of humanitarian practices and principles.
Is it possible that you are able to look at things objectively for what they are, as the evidence suggests, rather than through some childish prism of good guys and bad guys?
Hatuey@22:16
I would maintain that, though it wasn’t official policy, the death of innocent civilians was accepted as part and parcel of war. The change around the time of WW I was the idea of the “just” war where only the military were killed, probably to make the case for war more palatable to the people. The was plenty of collateral damage in the form of innocent Spanish civilians dying in the Peninsular War, for instance, but I have not come across tis being held up as anything out of line.
As to Nuremberg, would you have preferred that the victorious Allies had also prosecuted the Germans for the same atrocities that they themselves had committed? It is possible to take the view that, by concentrating on crimes committed only by the German side only, the Allies were acknowledging that war was a bloody and atrocious thing and neither side had clean hands, but that one side’s hands were less clean than the others.
Stalin was bothered about show trials, and held many of them, it was a feature of the Soviet system. All those tortured to make false confessions still had to sign the confession before being killed. It was a madness that required the victim to absolve their oppressor. Its the same madness that allows Zionists to cast themselves as victim when bombing the neighbours.
SKRIPALS
From George Galloway:
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/438157-skripal-syria-allegations-russia/
That there may have been traces of something pernicious inside the house I grant. That the Skripals were simultaneously affected by it while still inside the house I doubt.
What like? Did Sergei have a clandestine business dealing in CW?
Did he help the Uk to shift some of them to Syria?
or what?
o/t but much unusual Chinook and Merlin overflying today>>?? Training up?
Sharp Ears,
Training up? to be shot down, then more escalation, as The Russians suffer a severe Missile Attack from a US Aircaft Carrier, shoot back and sink it taking thousands of American lives. Then it goes nuclear.
Incidentally, no one has been able to explain “Russian satellite images showing two craters full of very hot molten material”, which remained exceedingly hot for months later, unless small nuclear weapons were used 17 years ago today.
We will probably get the big ones.
Our British Government has already seriously annoyed The Russian Government. They think we have gone as mad as The Americans.
http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
Tony
The US aircraft carriers are carefully out of range of the ME. The nearest is a Marine helicopter carrier with half a dozen F-35B on board off the coast of Yemen. Any missile attack is likely to come from the at least three nuclear attack subs (one ours) plus destroyers in the Med plus any in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf plus aircraft. Putin is alleged to have said that Russia will sink one ship for every child killed in a false flag event. What happens if any attack hits Russians or their assets is what we dread to think. It is sad to look at a situation like this and realize that it is us, the good guys, who are goading the bad guys into a response. I know that this is probably normal practice but with the Internet many more are aware.
There are many as yet unexplained aspects to 17 years ago along with as you say the ground cooking, like the unseemly rush to get rid off all the detritus under extreme secrecy. Ho hum.
They all look to be in ports. https://southfront.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/maritime_10_09_2018.jpg?x81896
Churchill wrote history of English Speaking People and saw himself as an English rather than British imperialist whose mother was American. Hence handing the empire over to America during and after WWII wasn’t viewed as a defeat but simply moving the capital of the empire from London to Washington.
Except the actual deep state capital never really moved at all, because it remained the City of London, the financial capital of the empire, with a branch office in Wall Street. This explains the audacity of the Prime Minister, whether knowingly or as a clueless puppet, to campaign on behalf of deep state against the Trump presidency, both before and after he was elected.
Remember back in 2017, when that buffoon of a defence minister, Michael Fallon, suggested that Britain might be willing to use it’s nuclear weapons preemptively? A Russian senator responded by saying Britain would be wiped from the face of the earth.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-nuclear-attack-uk-wipe-nation-face-earth-589794
Here its F16s droning loud over Methwold.