State-funded BBC lets Boris Johnson claim of Russia “stockpiling novichok” go unchallenged while UK govt's Skripal “drama” continues to defy sense & reason
The Russian election is rolling on, so far with no major hitches, and maybe even less than the expected level of Western sniping. Ghouta continues to be liberated, and so far the predictions of a chemical weapons false flag to justify NATO cruise missile attacks on Damascus have not come about. For the sake of global survival we have to hope that continues.
Meanwhile the Skripal case is exposed more and more as a poorly executed, ragged and ridiculous piece of political theatre.
The name “novichok” was very possibly grabbed from a Sky TV drama aired earlier this year.
I found the episode and extracted the clip.
Is the UK govt for real or are we all watching a reality TV show? #Novichok #Skripal #Propaganda @2ndNewMoon @marcelsardo @RussianEmbassy pic.twitter.com/DoIpa6gqru— Syricide (@Syricide) March 17, 2018
In the TV show novichok is presented as a secret and deadly and exclusively Russian nerve agent, and this is indeed the way May presented it in Parliament. Her research team possibly didn’t bother to look any further, and this is why, when the truth about real-life novichoks emerged, the government was left floundering.
Risible of course, but currently not completely impossible.
Rather than acknowledging the dismal and embarrassing failure of their narrative the UK government, in the person of Boris Johnson, is apparently doubling down and telling fresh and even more extraordinary stories. On the state-funded BBC’s Andrew Marr show today, Johnson talked parallel-universe nonsense for 20 minutes, completely unchallenged by state-funded Marr of course, who simply let him say whatever he felt like saying, in the grand tradition of state-funded BBC complicity in state-level deceit. Johnson’s brand of weasel-words and lies by omission and commission was in the best tradition of “perfidious Albion”, even going so far as to allege at one point:
We actually have evidence within the last 10 years that Russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purpose of assassination, but has also been creating and stockpiling novichok.
A claim that flies in the face of every known fact, including a) that Russia’s entire stockpile of chemical weapons was verified as destroyed last year by the OPCW, and that novichoks had never been considered viable or manufactured anywhere prior to an alleged OPCW-observed succesful atempt to do so by Iran in 2016.
The government’s rhetoric is currently so deranged, its conduct by turns so delusional and so furtive, while the basic facts of what happened to the Skripals remain so contradictory, it’s legitimate at this stage to wonder how real any of this “drama” actually is.
And what the endgame here can possibly be.
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Time for an off BBC. ?
With regard to the BBC, for me the writing was on the wall when the BBC World Service (the government’s overseas propaganda unit) ceased to be funded by the Foreign Office and was bundled in with national TV and Radio, to be funded by the licence payer.
Suddenly all pretence that our domestic broadcaster was independent and totally separate from any influence by HMG went out of the window,
Somebody should turn that into an animated GIF.
Go ahead, it isn’t difficult with https://giphy.com/create/gifmaker
It is unbelievable what happens on the Independent site since last night.
Most of the comments which were skeptical about the Skripal affair or supporting Russia got erased without any reason, leaving mostly comments denigrating the Russian state and its people.
for example here:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-election-latest-putin-victory-skripal-attack-link-increase-citizen-turnout-uk-salisbury-spy-a8262996.html
My feeling unfortunately is that such things, this wave of libel and smear, is a precursor to a war which will be opened by the US “allied” with EU, probably against Syria, then gradually hitting Russian forces there as well.
Perhaps the owners of the laughably titled ‘Independent’ might have a role in that?
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jul/29/saudi-investor-buys-up-significant-stake-in-the-independent
One should make screenshots of comments which were skeptical about the Skripal affair or supporting Russia before they get erased, for future reference. 🙂
Think what this says about our mass-media, that with all their resources, thousands of journalists, always so dedicated and bustling to provide us with the latest news and views, that it’s up to Craig Murray to put them all to shame by asking the right questions, which demolishes the entire foundation for this absurd piece of crass and very nasty political theatre. There’s an awful puff piece in the Guardian about Cathy Newman from Channel Four News and reading it one senses that both of the journalists live in comfortable fantasy world, where they are intrepid and fearless professionals striving to present the Truth to an eager public. The News is something precious and holy for them and facts are jewels they mine with their sweat. Yet Cathy, an Amazon princess of journalism, can’t ask a single, simple, relevant question about this transparently pathetic piece of nonsense coming out of… Read more »
Think what this says about our mass-media, that with all their resources, thousands of journalists, always so dedicated and bustling to provide us with the latest news and views,
The Big Lie doesn’t come cheap. The Mighty Wurlitzer wouldn’t wurlitz the way it does, if it weren’t mightily well-funded.
that it’s up to Craig Murray to put them all to shame by asking the right questions, which demolishes the entire foundation for this absurd piece of crass and very nasty political theatre.
And yet the Spectacle continues, undiminished and unimpeded, as if it hadn’t even noticed the demolition of its entire foundation. (Much like it survived, undiminished, the demolitions of 9/11/2001.)
Think what this says about the Spectacle’s highly trained Audience. Only experts in Reality Control could successfully maintain their suspension of disbelief, under such extremely adverse and trying conditions.
There are so many obvious, simple and important questions about this strange affair in Salisbury and Boris Johnson’s latest extraordinary performance on the Andrew Marr Show, yet, it’s hard to find a single journalist employed within our ‘free and independent’ and ‘non-propaganda’ mainstream media, that are asking any of them. It’s left to Craig Murray to ask the obvious questions and take apart the absurd version of events presented by the government. How does such mind-numbing uniformity come to exist? Why do the journalists agree with the government about so much? It can’t be because the ‘facts’ are so obvious, because clearly they are not. Whatever happened to this ‘spectrum of views’ idea that our media is supposed to eagerly reflect? Why on earth would the Russians use such a clumsy and easily traced chemical weapon to carry out the assassination of such a minor and uninteresting, useless, ex-spy? So… Read more »
How does such mind-numbing uniformity come to exist? Why do the journalists agree with the government about so much? It can’t be because the ‘facts’ are so obvious, because clearly they are not. Whatever happened to this ‘spectrum of views’ idea that our media is supposed to eagerly reflect?
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” — Upton Sinclair
Point taken, but this is the slide towards war with Russia after all. Money doesn’t mean much if you’re a pile ash, does it? Don’t these people think, at all, ever?
They’re no longer capable of thinking, in the normal sense, if they ever were. They’ve reached their exalted positions in the ruling class Establishment because they’re carefully trained themselves, probably since highschool, or earlier, to think only the kind of thoughts that will advance the interests of the ruling class, and their own careers in service to it. George Orwell explains how it’s done: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was… Read more »
Orwell called it Crimestop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime “Crimestop” means to rid oneself of unwanted thoughts immediately, i.e., thoughts that interfere or disagree with the ideology of the Party. This way, a person avoids committing thoughtcrime. In the novel, we hear about crimestop through the eyes of protagonist Winston Smith: The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. Crimestop, they called it in Newspeak. He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He presented himself with propositions—’the Party says the earth is flat’, ‘the party says that ice is heavier than water’—and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them. Orwell also describes crimestop from the perspective of Emmanuel Goldstein in the book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism: Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any… Read more »
has anyone seen the ” victims” yet?
Craig Murray published an excellent article yesterday:
Boris Johnson Issues Completely New Story on “Russian Novichoks”
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/03/boris-johnson-issues-completely-new-story-on-russian-novichoks/
So can anyone explain? The lack of confirmation of hospital is exactly the same problem as in the Seth Rich death hoax. And in each case, the maligned side obviously knows it’s a hoax but doesn’t call it out. (In the Rich hoax, it’s the Democrats). Even when you look at 9/11 both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were actually involved and millions of Muslims know it was an inside job but how many are calling it out? None that I can see.
It’s all a game at the top. I just don’t get it.
the Seth Rich death hoax What do you mean by “hoax”? He didn’t die? He’s not the actual source of the “Russian hackers” leak? Or the Democratic Party apparatus and the “deep state” had nothing to do with it? What would be your evidence for that? in each case, the maligned side obviously knows it’s a hoax but doesn’t call it out. Even when you look at 9/11 both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were actually involved That’s what’s called a “limited hangout”; it’s the backup plan when the Official Story starts visibly collapsing, so that people now imagine that they’ve discovered the formerly-secret “truth”, and cease any further inquiry. Following the assumption that the simplest explanation consistent with the available evidence is most likely to be correct, you might conclude that for three out of four airplanes, there were no hijackers at all. The passengers and flight crews were simply… Read more »
By Seth Rich death hoax I do mean he didn’t die. This two-minute video of a family interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOn09bhDXMo) taken 3 days after the alleged death shows the father starting to mouth the mother’s words as the camera pans from him to her (clearly indicating scripting and also a sign they’re TELLING us it’s a hoax, that is, the “revelation of the method (ROV)” they are obliged to employ), the brother swallowing his smiles (also ROV), zero signs of anyone of grieving (ROV), platitudes and dead giveaway, the black and white Masonic panda (ROV). This is a link to a website of a Mason (seemingly just a normal Mason who’s not into the high-level stuff) recommending the movie, Kung Fu Panda, to other Masons and their children because of all the Masonic references https://www.myfreemasonry.com/threads/kung-fu-panda-the-mysteries.2085/ I’m not sure what you mean by your explanation of 9/11. We’re both agreed it was… Read more »
This discussion is wandering way off topic isn’t it.
I wouldn’t say that at all. As I say, there’s a similarity between the Seth Rich death hoax and this one: that there is no confirmation of the hospital and if everyone recognised SR as a hoax there wouldn’t have to be any discussion about it, I’d just refer to it, but people don’t. They seem to be incredibly resistant to the idea for some reason even though the 2-min video makes it very, very clear and indicates that in no shape or form could it fit “real event” – no shape or form. It seems we all have our level of hoaxery recognition – I’m sure I have my own but it seems to be on the higher end. These events should be viewed in the massive context in which they appear, not as isolated or even simply as part of a wider let’s-go-to-war-with-Russia-thing – the context is so… Read more »
Must stop googling.
https://www.lightonconspiracies.com/googles-search-results-on-parkland-shooting-are-different-from-other-search-engines/
Although I don’t speak Russian doesn’t Novichok just mean something new?, therefore usage in a drama is unremarkable. No doubt children in the future will be taught how Vladimir Putin developed and administered this nerve agent whilst disguised as an ice cream cone. As for Mr Marr, he’s a television presenter acting the role of an interviewer within a television show. In other words, pure theatre.
Don’t get down in the sewer with them, Vlad: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-18/russias-reaction-insults-west-political-suicide
It’s interesting that Tyler asks when wondering about the lack of confirmation of their whereabouts the question, Do they even exist? because when I saw dad was 66 and daughter was 33 I thought “You’ve got to be kidding me,” and wondered exactly the same thing. 33 is THE Masonic number while all multiples of 11 are significant – 9/11, JFK assassination 22/11.
This prompts me to really wonder. If the Skripals don’t really exist – or even if they do – Russia knows this is a ludicrous false flag hoax so why don’t they call it out? The Poirot reference is a bit of a giveaway. The Dutch former high-finance operative turned whistleblower, Ronald Bernard, has said that at the very top there’s no distinction. They’re all in it together. Here’s an image taken secretly of Putin, Bush and Chinese president at a Masonic gathering. https://archive.org/details/bush_putin_china_prez
What the heck? Crazy, crazy image!
Oh dear, another clanger I’ve made. However, according to the person linked to in my comment below, Putin is nevertheless a Mason, there is massive Masonic symbolism in this event and it really makes no sense for Russia not to call this out, does there, unless they’re somehow in on it? The Hegelian Dialectic “Two conflicting sides to reach a predefined conclusion, is what they always use to reach their common objective: The NWO,” makes more sense than any alternatives, no?
On that theory, explain why the Russian military has spent the last two years, and over a hundred lives, saving Syria from the drooling psychopaths that the NWO sent to destroy it.
Milosevic, my knowledge of these matters is very limited so I cannot answer your question, but the simple facts are that this event was staged and so was SR’s death and the maligned sides know and don’t call them out … or not completely … I mean you could say the Russians do by referring to Poirot and saying they think it’s UK intel because, of course, it was but they don’t actually say the word “hoax”. There’s false flag hoaxes all over the show, including the train bombing in St Petersburg last year (https://nodisinfo.com/smoke-bombs-used-fake-terror-attack-st-petersburg-subway-bombing-hoax/) and they tend to have the same MO and they all use Masonic symbology. No side never calls the other out. Ever. They can’t because they all do it but it seems, more than that, they’re all in on it somehow or perhaps they play their own little game where they surprise each other. Perhaps… Read more »
It almost seems to me that the power elite are rubbing their mockery so much in our faces that they really do want us to know. I thought I’d check out The Sun as it tends to really go for it with the false-flag hoaxes (here’s a priceless example for the Manchester bombing – https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3671647/harrowing-footage-shot-by-dad-searching-for-teen-daughter-in-manchester-arena-moments-after-bomb-blast/) but this article (https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5840249/nerve-agent-novichok-sergei-skripal-car-russia-spy/) didn’t seem particularly more silly – it would be hard now, wouldn’t it? What surprised me was that every single comment made fun and they’re quite hilarious. I love the names of some of the commenters: Colonel Mustard, Whoflungdung, Baron Stephen Von Reichenbach.
Seriously, I think they really are trying to tell us. Why would they report the Russian ambassador having a Poirot dig? Surely, people are simply forced to laugh along with it. It’s weird – all the Russiaphobic stuff and then a joke from the Russians that can only make you sympathise with them. Funnily enough, when you google “skripal” “poirot” site:.ru, there’s only one response and it’s an article in French. No doubt the UK Russian ambassador is in on it, too. Maybe he complained the Russiaphobia was simply too much and it needed to be lightened a little with his little joke that could only draw sympathetic response.
I have heard it said that they do have to tell us. It,s up to us if we take notice. That is why we are meant to be sleep walking and not properly awake.
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,… Read more »
Yes, they do have to tell us. It’s called “revelation of the method”. The staged event analyst, Ole Dammegard, was told by an insider that they justify their evil deeds by telling us with clues, things that don’t add up, numbers and symbols, contradictions, impossibilities, ridiculousness, multiple changes in story, “leaked” candid footage, etc. Here is a Masonic analysis of the event starting with an image of an orange bag and a builder’s bucket (words are coded using an ancient method, Gematria, and “orange” codes to 33) https://steemit.com/conspiracy/@lavater/sergei-skripal-poisoned-russian-spy-masonic-hoax-33-and-777-coded As I stated in an earlier comment the Russians know and there shouldn’t be anything stopping them exposing it and the ambassador’s comment about Poirot surely means he’s part of it. This is the conclusion of the analysis. An Order Out of Chaos PsyOp aimed at increasing the Tyranny in the UK (increased “Security”) and programming the masses into hating Russia &… Read more »
http://thecoincidencetheorist.com/911/911-predicted-in-the-simpsons/
https://www.rapmusicguide.com/blog/the-coup-party-music-911-a-decade-later/
The FCO had a post on twitter berating Russia for taking 10 years to get rid of chemical weapons (no mention of the USA or Israel, of course). Now Boris says they never got rid of them. They need to get their propaganda straight.
Corbyn isn’t some radical socialist as far as I can see. He’s more a traditional, middle-of-the-road… social democrat with a slightly left of centre political agenda. That the entire political spectrum has lurched dramatically to the political right over the last few decades, especially inside parliament, which is massively unrepresentative, is the only thing that makes Corbyn appear ‘radical.’
Here’s a pretty misrable, unfortunately rather accurate, summation of a lot that’s wrong with our political culture and how difficult and dangerous it’s become to voice even the mildest criticism of the state’s attitude towards Russia.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/19/corb-m19.html
Perhaps the purpose of this hysteria is not to ‘prepare the public’ for an attack on Syria but to distract the public from the reality that any direct attack on Syria will lead to an immediate response by Russia. If Russia has indeed told the US that, if any missiles are launched against Damascus, it will sink the ships that launched them then there will either be a crisis bigger by far than the Cuban Missile Crisis or an immediate nuclear war. If that is the game being played then the idiotic tantrums being performed around Skrival’s case are a small price to pay for a deliberate distraction from the end of US hegemony in the Middle East. I have no more idea of whether this is the situation than my new puppy has but it is a real possibility. If the US and NATO have to retreat from southern… Read more »
I increasingly think that those things can only be answered by considering religious questions.
How much of the Neocons’ motivation comes from straightforward greed for resources, markets or monetary dominance, and how much from a religious ideology interpretted from the Old Testament ?
100% greed in my view. The religious ideology is just presentational.
Fair enough.
I have been trying to form an opinion for many years, and still haven’t.
The pursuit of material wealth beyond a certain point seems to be driven by a craving for power.
What is the principle of ‘power’ ? I guess that leads into metaphysics…
Agreed. Some random thoughts:
Maybe the craving for money and power shows that at root it’s a sociopathic/psychopathic insecurity. The inability to just “be” in the present arises from the fear of what that really entails – becoming conscious of and integrating repressed traumatic material.
It’s not so much that these seemingly hyper-ambitious types are pursuing something as they are running away from something. The big problem is that our culture actively promotes this kind of self-avoidance.
“the inability to just “be””. 40 years ago somebody suggested to me that human beings had all died out in W . Europe, to be replaced by human doings. That seemed to answer a question I’d had for some time ….It might prove a useful reflection for some here.
As far as I am concerned, the Tories have won this. Corbyn and McDonnell, Sturgeon and Lucas, the whole sorry racist lot of them have zero credibility and deserve all the defeat that comes their way. This has been a loyalty test, nothing more. The option was either to unquestioningly believe the completely unfounded statements of the Tory government or to stand up for reason, truth and the principles of justice that underscore what little is good about our society. They have bowed to the hysteria of a brainwashed, facebooked public and a psychopathic brainwashing media. These politicians are traitors to peace and any sense of common humanity. Even if the Russian state is ultimately proved beyond doubt to be solely culpable for what (if anything?) went on in Salisbury, I would still claim the above. Once those principles are thrown out, it’s darn near impossible to get them back.… Read more »
This has been a loyalty test, nothing more. The option was either to unquestioningly believe the completely unfounded statements of the Tory government or to stand up for reason, truth and the principles of justice that underscore what little is good about our society. They have bowed to the hysteria of a brainwashed, facebooked public and a psychopathic brainwashing media.
You could, of course, say the same thing about the even more obviously manufactured 9/11 event. That was the litmus test of all litmus tests for anybody claiming to be an opponent of the Anglo-Zionist Empire.
Once that test had been spectacularly failed, say by the date of the original Iraq invasion in March 2003, the slide down the slippery slope became essentially unstoppable for all those who had been thereby revealed as fake-left poseurs.
And now here we are. Colour me completely unsurprised.
I totally agree milosevic.
The course was set back then, this is the destination.
I think that our slide (in the UK) into totalitarianism and war is now inevitable, short of some hugely unpredicable outside intervention.
I guess that I harboured some vague hope that someone in the political-media establishment might be awake to the idea of false flags enough to actually demand standard levels of skepticism about Salisbury (perhaps even private 9/11 skeptics ?) – but this seems idealistic twaddle now.
Now we know what the significance of reinforcing al-Tanf was: they are training the FSA in the use of chemical weapons there – according to Russian General Staff spokesman General Sergey Rudskoy.
https://zerohedge.whotrades.com/blog/43175985996
“Supine protoplasmic invertebrate jellies”, to use one of Boris’ favourite phrases.
“Craven opportunists” (me)
Mrs May takes no chances… from Zero Hedge
What gets me about the comments in the guardian regarding the Russian government. Is the condescending attitude on display
This is coupled with the complete lack of self awareness about their own countries political system.
The uk government sells arms to oppressive regimes that end up in the hands of terrorists
They then turn a blind eye to the activity of the gulf monarchies who fund jihadi terrorism.
They knowingly support regime change destroying countries creating refugees
What has Russia done that could match that?
“The Russian election is rolling on, so far with no major hitches, and maybe even less than the expected level of Western sniping.” I haven’t looked around in the major media (which I don’t do at all really) since Putin’s expected win, but I did pop into the Toronto Star. It’s awful on anything dealing with politics and foreign policy. And that’s putting it mildly. Putin’s win elicited some typical racist ranting that the ruined Star was happy to spew at its readers: “Russia extends Vladimir Putin’s power for six more years in barely democratic election” by Vladimir Isachenkov and Jim Heintz (The Associated Press)
Published on 18 Mar 2018 Incumbent Russian leader Vladimir Putin is set to secure a resounding victory in the Russian presidential election, according to partial results made public by the electoral commission. With 31 percent of the votes counted, mostly in eastern part of the country, Vladimir Putin leads with 73 percent of the vote, well above the simple majority needed to avoid a run-off. First-time Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin is running second with 15 percent, while veteran nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who first ran against Boris Yeltsin in 1991, rounds out the top three with about seven percent. None of the other five candidates is on track to receive more than two percent of the vote. The early results are in line with exit-polls conducted by Russian polling agencies FOM, which predicted Putin would take 77 percent of the vote, and VCIOM, which forecast a final share of… Read more »
Thanks for that.
“Putin was first elected to the Kremlin in 2000, and again four years later. Constitutionally barred from serving more than two consecutive terms, he did not run in 2008, the same year presidential terms were extended from four years to six years.” That was dodgy. But, Compared with the bloodspilling monsters that the West tosses up in our captured electoral systems, it’s piddly and probably, in important respects, good.
Excerpt:
Vladimir Putin is making an address in his electoral campaign headquarters. Putin leads the elections with some 75.5 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results.
Vladimir Putin expressed gratitude to all his supporters and voters, stating that the election results clearly indicate that the people support his political course, despite the hard times Russia recently went through.
https://www.rt.com/news/421645-putin-kremlin-election-speech/
If in the car aircon..
.they would have tried to brush it away….would have sneezed breathing it in even more surely it would act very quickly…residue on clothes….car interior…..in restaurant where put coats scarves etc…..
Idiocy is the new normal in both the U.S. and the U.K. Can the majority of Western people’s really believe the nonsense being spewed out by media and government spokesperson’s? This is the same old “Operation Gladio” style false flag operation that was used to demonize the left in Europe for decades. Operation Gladio should have led to the conviction and imprisonment of NATO, CIA and other Western intelligence leaders, as well as heads of state given the scores of deaths of innocent European civilians it produced. Instead the MSM pretend Operation Gladio never happened, history repeats itself before our eyes, and the public is left believing in totally fabricated events used to demonize the current “enemy” all disconnected from anything resembling physical reality. So what’s new one might ask? This bit of Western propaganda crazy is as old as the Holy Inquisition and the Crusades.
I keep posting this. Let me know when you think it’s no longer relevant. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of… Read more »
I read that book for the first time just two years ago.
It took me weeks to get over it.
How could he describe so well the world I am living in, several decades before its devolution?
Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
The longer it goes on, the more it looks like an orchestrated false flag operation designed to demonise Russia, Putin and any dissenters in he West.
The question is, to what end?
Syria and Iran?
My first thoughts were on Syria. The West looks screwed as they have been outplayed. So to soften the public for a direct attack on Damascus?
But it’s also played out to demonise Corbyn. But that may be incidental.
This whole story has looked like 100% fake news from the outset. The problem is certain politicians and our corporate media distort language and this causes the inattentive to actually believe in the impossible. For example, what is really meant by Hillary Clinton’s assertion that Russia “hacked” the American elections. I would consider hacking the American election to require that Russia used some kind of technology causing a miscount of the votes. However the voting machines were not even connected to the internet in any way that would have allowed Russia to alter the count. It is said that someone in Russia hacked some of the electoral roles of voters but this suggests they may have actually altered details in some way to deny people a vote. In reality, only read only copies of any registers were hacked so it never impacted anyone’s ability to cast votes. What is now… Read more »
Recently, someone at the OG linked to a German spoof (with photo) showing that Putin’s passport had been found at the scene, ‘hidden under a leaf’.
I sent it to a friend who believes all of the tosh with the comment “looks like you were eight about Putin after all”.
His reply: “The really interesting thing is that Putin wanted it to be clear it was him. Presumably this is to strike fear in the hearts of anyone who has angered him.”
Incredibly they will believe anything, and this was from a retired Professor.
Unable to accept the fact that their minion poodle, the Goldman candidate, lost the election to a virtually unelectable fool, the MSM and those who control it have gone into the abyss. So first it was the ridiculous electoral college system. Then seamlessly transitioning from the preelection slander of Sanders and Trump, they ramped up the preelection diet of 6 anti Trump articles per day per paper into editions having no news but anti Trump news. Having gotten nowhere they return to the old theme – that the odious harridan did not actually lose, but was cheated by those nasty Russkies, without whom she would be flying in Air Force One, on her way to supervise regime change in any imagined enemy of Israel, practising the endearing chortle she graced us with, when Gaddafi was sodomised and murdered. Now that donations to the fraudulent Clinton Foundation have desiccated, what is… Read more »
the endearing chortle she graced us with, when Gaddafi was sodomised and murdered
Syria and Iran, or maybe Easter Island.
Doesn’t matter, really, as long as the MIC keeps providing a robust portfolio to its 1%-ers, whose profits are imperative.
Viet Nam got them hooked; the profits far out-weighed the ‘collateral damage’, and so it goes..
I was driving to pick up some firewood at around 2 PM today (Sunday) and heard a local radio (sorry not sure of the station) news story that announced the novichok was delivered to the victims as a powder that had been introduced to the air conditioning unit of the Skripal’s BMW.
I got home and around 4-30 PM I looked for the story on line. BBC news, Guardian, Independent and RT were not running with this story.
It is doubtful local radio station would make this kind of thing up without somebody officially giving them the story.
I wonder why this announcement was only available on local radio?
Sky news is running the story.
https://news.sky.com/story/russia-stockpiling-deadly-nerve-agent-used-in-salisbury-11295463
“Russia ‘stockpiling’ deadly nerve agent used in Salisbury
The claim comes as Sky sources say it could have been administered through the ventilation system in Sergei Skripal’s car.”
So the car would have to have been undetectably broken into and the air con spiked with novichok the night before?
This scenario is nothing like the old days of the USSR with the assassination by poison pellet from a specially made air-gun disguised as an umbrella.
The poison pellet was highly targeted and discreet.
By contrast poisoning the BMW car would likely contaminate anyone recovering it which would cause massive public outrage towards Russia.
However a car makes such a convenient crime scene for investigators.
A closed environment unlikely to have been disturbed since the Skripals left the car.
Easy to move to a secure location.
Maybe the FSB left some convenient ID in the glove box?
I will be interested to see if the samples given to OPCW are taken directly from the Skripals spinal fluid or from the BMW’s pollen filter?
Badly maintained AC systems can also create their own toxins and make you violently ill. Having A/C on with exhaust leaks can even kill you.
Thomas Peterson’s observation that the BMW would have to have been secretly interfered with is just one issue but there are other problems with the story too.
My feeling is that a good lung full of novichok blasted from a BMW’s air-con would cause the Skripal’s immediate difficulty in completing their car journey.
It is hard to imagine how afterwards they parked the car, got a car park ticket, enjoyed a meal, downed a couple of pints at a local pub and then wondered about Salisbury on a window shopping amble, all after being contaminated with the worlds most toxic nerve agent?
I’m sure Boris can explain how the toxic dust is made from micro bubbles that dissolve in the lungs and release the toxin only after a couple of hours.
Lung delivery is described as the way to ensure fastest nerve agent action. Through the skin is described as 30-40 minutes.
Aircon blowing on face would be consistent, but it again sounds nonsense unless the Russians want to be caught, saying ‘See what we can do.’
The problem is no career derailing sanctions for lying politicians, lying scribblers and editors and misinforming intelligence officers.
And wouldnt the people breaking into the car and spiking it with novichok have to be wearing protective gear themselves?
Legionnaire’s disease.
Mike Whitney is always good-he seems to have been dropped by counterpunch-
https://russia-insider.com/en/will-deep-state-launch-false-flag-syria-russias-election-day/ri22817?
If that link doesn’t work go to Russian Insider.
As I said below, I get the feeling that the Novichko story was meant to be bumped out of the news agenda by something really big. It quickly served its primary purpose: to embarrass Corbyn and keep the Blairites blaring out their calls for war on the master’s behalf. Miniature Poodles just aren’t happy unless they are in bouncing around in daddy’s lap.
Whitney’s still available at Unz. com. Unfortunately, CounterPunch has ceased to be a reliable source. A lot of their better authors have been dropped, including Israel Shamir, Linh Dinh and Bouthaina Shabaan. The website’s illustrious founder, Alexander Cockburn, died a few years ago, and his successor, Jeffrey St. Clair, just isn’t the same.
It looks like a straight swap: Mike Whitney for Louis Proyect who sees the siege of East Ghoutta as another Leningrad. Mind you he probably sees himself as another Lenin.
Yes. I used to go to Counterpunch every day. These days hardly ever. The content has deteriorated since Alex Coburn shuffled off.
Sad, but true. And Louis Proyect, oy! I think the Great Decline was most clearly marked with Andrew Levine’s endless essays on how Trump would never ever ever be elected in the US. That was his special insight, his real connection to the “American people,” and absolute political tosh.
I had my own bad experience with Jeffrey St. Clair and blogged about it. It wasn’t anything earth-shattering. I pointed out that a link on his site had been hijacked and he insulted me. What a class act!
The Tories were in desperate straights until the Cossak cavalry came riding over the horizon to save them, and I suspect desperate measures where deemed necessary. Luke Harding basically makes a living writing crime fiction involving spies and Russians. It’s a fictional narrative tarted-up as journalism. The British press absolutely adore this kind of stuff and so do the public. I’m waiting for Inspector Barnaby to turn up in Salisbury dragging young Morse behind him. The trouble for the opposition, or someone like Corbyn, is how alone and isolated he is in this kind of fantasy fiction landscape. It’s a dramatic stage, like the lower chamber, bursting with symbolism, role-playing and its own rules and rhetoric, and this all puts a non-actor like Corbyn at a tremendous disadvantage. How does one stand up to a baying lynch mob when their blood is up? It’s possible in fiction in movies, but… Read more »
‘The trouble with the opposition, or someone like Corbyn, is how alone and isolated he is..’MichaelK
SO, Instead of continuing to be the audience, isn’t it time that we, the people, rose up off the sofa and made our voices heard in support of the only sane voice in this outrageous drama?
Corbyn can’t, and nor should he be expected to, do it alone.
I couldn’t agree more. It is way past time and gaining more urgency every day.
Michael: as for Corbyn, just how “alone and isolated” is he? And isolated how: there is no ideological ground between the parties on this – a fact he himself tried to verify in his recent Guardian article. The isolation is all smoke and mirrors fairground trickery: he stands ideologically aligned and in lockstep with May’s treason. He has endorsed that her binary options are the only two possible alternatives. I am sure you have read it in black and white. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/15/salisbury-attack-conflict-britain-cold-war Propagandists like Ancona and Cohen are trying to produce the illusion of choice and real quantitative and qualitative difference: where none exists. This is supposedly based on Corbyn’s alleged reluctance to blame Russia in strong enough terms. Yet he does confirm that the “use of military nerve agents on the streets of Britain is barbaric and beyond reckless”? He does not question the conclusion that it was Novichok: which… Read more »
McDonnell now ramping it up.
Racist.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43448563
Bang on
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/17/cranks-turned-world-upside-down-time-to-fight-back
What they are doing is smearing any dissent about events in Salisbury as a ‘conspiracy theory.’ This is very convenient and useful indeed. Corbyn’s on the ropes once more and a couple of years of steady progress wiped out in few days and the Tories are bouncing back once more like a coloured beachball on a sunlit strand.
Maybe not though. “First rule of propaganda is to make the free-thinking believe they are in a smaller minority than they really are”
You’re right of course. I was really reffering to the reaction of the Labour Party, which seems to be spooked and in a panic.
What they are doing is smearing any dissent about events in Salisbury as a ‘conspiracy theory.’ This is very convenient and useful indeed. Corbyn’s on the ropes once more and a couple of years of steady progress wiped out in few days
Thus do the ruling-class benefits continue to flow from the endless cornucopia that is the 9/11 false flag event. Any genuine left that had accumulated fifteen years of experience in exposing that would simply laugh at this latest idiocy; in fact, the ruling class would not have dared to try it, because it would only serve as further evidence of their psychopathic criminality.
But sadly, if there existed a genuine left of any significance, we would be living in an alternate universe, no less remote from actually-existing reality than the delusional fantasy world that the Establishment wishes us to mentally inhabit.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/18/jeremy-corbyn-vladimir-putin-russia
Well, the Guardian/Observer from the liberal/left end of the UK’s free and independent media spectrum, wouldn’t agree with Catte’s observations for a second. They’d cry… conspiracy theorist crank! Everything, apparently, except conspiracies involving the Russians, is mere coincidence. The very idea that Downing Street would simply lift a lurid plot from a television series involving dastardly Russians and a secret nerve agent called Novichok has no significance at all and to even suggest otherwise must mean one is a Russian sowing discord and aiming to split the West!
You have the causality the wrong way around. The lurid plot is first concocted by the state intelligence agencies, and then planted in the mass media to create the appropriate ideological environment for the actual false-flag black op to be uncritically accepted at face value.
We need a new Winston Churchill to lead us out of this unholy mess. No, not Boris: though he did his best to channel the Churchillean rhetoric and revive the spirit of “the Few” and our Dunkirkean “finest hour” (and perhaps suggest that a new Battle of Britain is about to take place?) …when he stood in front a WW2 Hurricane at the old RAF control centre at Uxbridge to declare that it was “overwhelmingly likely” Putin personally ordered the hit. If he was to further model himself on his idol: maybe he could have quoted: “But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States… […] will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science”? No, not that Churchill at all: but he eugenic Churchill who, in 1910-11 was in favour of the… Read more »
Boris (or Bojo the Clown as he is now called, or the CIA stooge as he is also called) has I believe blown it. Too much hype, too many lies, manipulation and of course Theresa the exceptional stateswoman that she is high fiving it in Salisbury with a ridiculous expression on her diseased face have between them shown the unfortunate and long suffering people just what a motley crew of psychopaths they really are. Even Tories are somewhat taken aback by this treasonous behaviour.
I think the majority do not believe this story, it’s possible the majority no longer trust the MSM which in time will bring about the demise of many news outlets including the traitorous Guardian.
Theresa the exceptional stateswoman that she is high fiving it in Salisbury with a ridiculous expression on her diseased face
Do you have a video for that?
It was featured in a lot of the MSM and screen grabs etc were all over Twitter. The fist-bump especially. Very bizarre.
Day in, day out people are found collapsed and ill – drug taking etc. Do doctors start suspecting a nerve agent attack? In less than 24 hours that was being headlined. Bit strange?
News of the policeman becoming ‘ill’ isn’t heard of until 7th December. Two days after the ‘nerve agent’ news comes out. The impression people are getting is that he fell ill at the scene. But this isn’t true. Nor do we know what his symptoms were. Just that he also went to hospital. This could even be just a psychosomatic illness once he heard about the nerve agent. Or saw an opportunity for a nice retirement package or to be a hero. None of the other policemen there or the doctor suffered anything.
What strikes me here is what people in the “drama industry” would call “set” and “blocking.” The NEWS set has been Americanized or rather, Fox-And-Friendsified — comfy chairs, cozy and close with each other offering easy intimacy and softball questions. It is hard to ask sharp follow-up questions in this sort of intimate arrangement. It is the opposite of what BBC interview sets USED to be with reporter and interviewee at ends of a rather long table interrupting coziness and easy intimacy and imposing appropriate distance which prevents coziness and easy intimacy and promotes direct Q and A and, if needed, sharp follow-up questions. I don’t have television and voted it off the island in 2011 during the horrific Barack Obama abomination scheme to destroy Social Security and Medicare; Medicaid and Food Stamps and the rest of the Social Contract because of HDD aka High Deficit Danger and, aisde from… Read more »
Translation:
“What surprises me most about all this Skripal story? It seems that no one watched a TV series “Strike Back” till 5th season. It uses the exact same scenario. Even the gas is the same “Novichok”. Which was created by the chemist, who escaped from Russia.
And it seems that the British government does not have any ideas about what to do next, because the series has only 6 episodes out of 10 by now. Where the cliffhanger is that now the British intelligence got their hands on the Novichok…”
I found it on Quora.
Just read the Andrew Rawnsley article and was a little heartend to see that the majority of the comments are completely disbelieving of the blame Russia line. probably why so many of the other Guradian articles on the subject have no comments section.
John Helmer has some interesting ideas. He calls the May/Johnson claims a ‘blood libel’ and points out that under British law it is a criminal offence to accuse a nation of murder.
Also interesting is his revelation of Canada’s role in the UN in attempting to obscure the very clear rules under the Chemical Weapons Convention which the UK- taking its cue from Israel and the US- seems to believe does not apply to it.
I remain convinced that the Tory plan/script calls for something big to happen soon- if this nonsense is not rapidly displaced from the news agenda it is going to make May an international laughing stock.
http://johnhelmer.net/the-blood-libel-of-the-british-government-sic/#more-18877
I remain convinced that the Tory plan/script calls for something big to happen soon- if this nonsense is not rapidly displaced from the news agenda it is going to make May an international laughing stock.
My dread thoughts exactly. It would be the end of them, they are doubling down as if confident that such spuriousness will be insignificant the other side of ……………….
I must say when Boris said that, my alarms bells started to ring. Why would he compound the rather dodgy narrative with more of the same if it isn’t part of a larger narrative to paint the Russians with the possession and use of chemical weapons? Would the NeoCon crazies be mad enough to directly enter the civil war in Syria and directly fight the Russians? With talk of John Bolton entering the white house as Trump’s National security adviser, Trump’s pre-election rhetoric seems to have been nullified by the people he’s appointing. So is the plan to enter the Civil War and then attack Iran and Hezbollah in the process – a wider middle east conflict? I must say I am concerned and hope Boris is simply trying cover up one lie with another and digging himself a deeper hole to lie in. By the way I was going… Read more »
US Ambassador Haley said not long ago United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Monday said the U.S. is willing to take military action to end the Syrian bombing of civilians if the U.N. is unable to do so. “When the international community consistently fails to act, there are times when states are compelled to take their own action,” Haley told the Security Council, noting that this is one of those times. “We warn any nation determined to impose its will through chemical attacks and inhuman suffering, but most especially the outlaw Syrian regime, the United States remains prepared to act if we must,” Haley said. “It is not a path we prefer. But it is a path we have demonstrated we will take, and we are prepared to take again.” http://thehill.com/policy/international/378007-nikki-haley-us-is-prepared-for-military-action-if-un-doesnt-stop-syrian Since then Senior Russian politicians have warned the US that any aggression against places in… Read more »
This again is very concerning, I also notice the Russians have been very circumspect in the use of their latest military technology in Syria preferring to use the Cold War stuff. Their anti-aircraft and anti-ship systems, their hypersonic cruise missiles may surprise the West used to fighting a defenceless enemy.
I would say attacking a defenseless enemy rather than “fighting” one.
Yes that is a better form of words
I have read that when he is not in public he is very serious, he clown persona is just for show. He’s a narcissist and maybe even a psychopath, the same for Theresa May. They know the whole thing is a set up, and Russia is not guilty of anything. Russia has posed no threat to the West. Theresa and Boris know they are starting this war to gain control of the world’s resources, including Russia’s and China’s. They know this is evil, but they think they can get away with it.
They are doing this subserviently to the USA NeoCons.
The USA NeoCons are subservient to Greater Israel.
Before interviewing Boris Johnson, Andrew Marr asserted that President Putin deals with opposition by killing them in the streets. I have complained to the BBC.
As foreign minister our Boris is the most pathetic thing in the world: a clown who’s not even funny.