All posts filed under: UK

Alexander Shulgin to the OPCW

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The following is the unofficial translation of the statement made by Alexander Shulgin, the head of Russian delegation at the OPCW, at that body’s April 18 Executive Council meeting at the Hague.   The text is provided by the Embassy of the Russian Federation in the Netherlands. Mr. Chairperson, I would like to start my speech with the words that belong to the great thinker Martin Luther, “A lie is like a snowball: the further you roll it, the bigger it becomes”. This wise aphorism is fully applicable to politics. He who has chosen the path of deception will have to lie again and again, making up explanations for discrepancies, spreading disinformation and doing forgery, desperately using all means to cover the tracks of the lies and to hide the truth. The United Kingdom has entered this slippery path. We can clearly see all of this on the example of the “Skripal case” fabricated by the British authorities, this poorly disguised anti-Russian provocation accompanied by an unprecedented propaganda campaign, taken up by a group of countries, …

WATCH: Russian ambassador to UK presser on eve of “allied” strikes on Damascus, April 13 2018

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Ruptly broadcast of the presser held by Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom Alexander Yakovenko on Friday, April 13 regarding the alleged Skripal poisoning and the alleged chemical weapon attack on Douma. Worth watching for the video comparison of Tony Blair, lying about WMDs in 2003 to promote war in Iraq, and proclaiming his support for war in Syria in 2108, based on the lies about the certitude of Russian culpability promulgated by the current UK govt. The statement took place the day after the release of the report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which backed the U.K.’s assessment that a military-grade nerve agent was used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury. The US/UK/French air strikes took place the night of 13-14 April, just hours after thi​s

Spiez Laboratory, the Skripal Case, and the OPCW

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The OPCW has, to date, made no comment and issued no rebuttal of Lavrov’s assertion concerning the full findings of Spiez Laboratory and the presence of BZ and its precursors in the March 23 blood samples taken from Sergei and Yulia Skripal. If Lavrov’s statement accurately reflects the actual findings of the Spiez Laboratory, and if the Skirpals were indeed given BZ in some form, this would account for both the state in which they were discovered on March 4, one of them unconscious and the other spaced out on a bench in Salisbury, and for the length of time Sergei and Yulia Skripal were comatose.

Decisive Failure Of US Forces

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by South Front, April 14, 2018 Early on April 14, the US, France and the UK carried out a massive missile strike on Syria justifying their actions with the alleged involvement of the Assad government into the April 7 Douma “chemical attack”. The Russian Defense Minsitry stated that 103 cruise and air-to-surface missiles were launched on different targets across Syria adding that 71 of them were intercepted by the Syrian Air Defense Forces (SADF). “According to available information, a total of 103 cruise missiles were fired… The Syrian air defense systems basically comprising Soviet-made weapons successfully repelled the strikes by aircraft and naval ships. A total of 71 missiles were intercepted,” Head of the Russian General Staff’s Main Operations Department Colonel-General Sergei Rudskoi said. Rudskoi said that the SADF had used its S-125, S-200, Buk, Kvadrat and Osa air defense systems to repel the strike. The Syrian General Command said that the US, the UK and France had launched 110 missiles also adding that most of them were intercepted. The numbers provided raise serious questions. Some experts …

The Skripal case & the perils of a rush to judgment

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by James O’Neill amended to remove reference to the Spiez laboratory, which is not mentioned directly in the OPCW summary The perils of coming to premature conclusions before all the facts are available has been starkly demonstrated by the latest developments in the alleged nerve gas attack upon the former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English town of Salisbury on 4 March 2018. Followers of this particular saga will be aware that British Prime Minister Theresa May and her Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson have made a series of statements to the United Kingdom House of Commons and to the media. They alleged, without qualification, that the Skripals were poisoned with a nerve agent of the “Novichok” class, of a type “developed by Russia.” That these statements were made before it was possible for the British chemical and biological research facility at Porton Down to have made an analysis and reached a scientifically valid conclusion did not matter. The object of the exercise was to demonize Russia in general and …

China must walk the talk and support Russia

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by Ghassan Kadi , The Saker, April 12, 2018 This article was written before the most recent missile attack on Syria, carried out by the US, France, and the UK.  Its argument retains relevance. When Chinese Defence Minister, General Wei Fenghe visited Moscow on the 4th of April 2018 and made his historic comment that he was in Moscow to give a message to America that China stands by Russia (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-04/chinas-new-defence-chief-visits-russia-to-send-a-message-to-us/9616216), he put China in a new and unprecedented global position, because China had never made such direct statements about the USA since the early days of Chairman Mao; and that was a long time ago, when China was not an industrial power and an aspiring global power, and long before the rift between the USSR and Mao’s China began. A lot has changed since, and neither Russia nor China are today what they used to be a few decades ago, and as they changed, matured and developed, their relationship vis-à-vis each other and the United States seem to have gone the full circle. Today’s …

More on the Skripal/Douma alleged false flag connection

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In regard to our suggestion the latest move against Damascus was predominantly a UK project, a link was sent to us today to an article by Thierry Meyssan on Voltairenet that’s certainly interesting. Published March 20 it puts forward the idea the Skripal affair was a false flag intended to be the launch pad for a wholesale diplomatic attack on Russia that Meyssan suggests would initiate a “new cold war.” While it’s possible to question this terminology (many would suggest we already have a “new cold war” and are on the verge of it becoming hot), his narrative offers a valid interpretation of recent events, and indeed looks more persuasive today that when it was written. What Meyssan suggests is as follows: Back in March a projected coup was planned between the UK government and the neocons in Washington to create an irresistible drive to a) launch a full blown assault on Damascus and b) get Russia removed from the UN Security Council. The means was to be first the Skripal incident and immediately thereafter …

How We Were Misled about Syria: George Monbiot of The Guardian

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George Monbiot is an influential journalist, and his words on Syria over the past seven years will have carried weight in shaping public opinion. Some critical readers, however, have been concerned. For while Monbiot has declared himself morally opposed to military intervention, and is demonstrably aware of how the media can manipulate news reports, he has repeatedly published statements – in his weekly Guardian column and on Twitter – that lend significant support to key interventionist arguments

Jeremy Corbyn’s Nazi Death Cult

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by CJ Hopkins So it appears the British are our last best hope of stemming the blood-dimmed Putin-Nazi tide that has shaken the foundations of Western democracy since Hillary Clinton lost the election. The neoliberal Resistance in the United States, led by the intelligence agencies, the Democratic Party, and the corporate media, fights on, but it’s a losing battle. Despite their control of most of the media, most members of the US Congress, and the military industrial complex, they are just no match for the fearsome power of Vladimir Putin’s international army of Nazi-brainwashing specialists and the evil genius of Donald Trump. All is not lost by any means — there is still the chance that the CIA might stage a coup, or a heart attack — but for now it seems that the ruling classes (and the millions of Americans who identify with them) are lying low and biding their time like Camembert-slurping surrender monkeys. Thus, once again, it’s up to the Brits to save democracy from annihilation. They’re doing a bang up job …

The Empire Strikes Backwards

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by John Helmer, Moscow, April 5, 2018 Empires are just like everything else going down the toilet. Bits always stick on the porcelain which require more flushing.  Embarrassing bits. Now in its fifth week since the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury on March 4, the bits that cannot be flushed away are producing an odour whose obviousness is embarrassing for  Salisbury Hospital and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The hospital is treating the Skripals for their medical welfare and is required by hospital policy and  UK law to be accountable to their next of kin. Their rights of access to and from the hospital are also required by  European Human Rights Convention.  The evidence now accumulating is that the hospital is detaining and isolating the Skripals against their will, preventing contact with their family. Requested to explain this and identify her legal authority, the response of the hospital’s chief executive, Cara Charles-Barks, is to stonewall. The OPCW, comprising 192 states which have signed, ratified and enacted the Chemical …

What exactly is happening at Salisbury hospital?

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The UK has publicly said it is looking for “transparency” in the Skripal investigation. Currently this seems no more true than any other part of the UK’s narrative. In fact the opposite would seem to be the case. The situation with the Skripals in regard to Salisbury NHS Trust hopsital is particularly opaque as things stand. Just to quickly recap. 1. The March 22 High Court judgment by Mr Justice Williams makes it clear the UK govt lawyers were trying to minimise or even deny the existence of the Skripals’ Russian relatives, claiming there was very little evidence there even were any such relatives, even after Sergey’s niece Viktoria had been interviewed by UK media outlets, and using this fabricated “lack of evidence” as a reason for not contacting the relatives or involving them in considerations of Yulia Skripals’ welfare. 2. The Russian embassy has repeatedly said it is being illegally denied access to the Skripals, and there is evidence the pair have been denied due process. 3. There are claims Yulia’s Russian cellphone has …

The Skripal case and the misuse of ‘intelligence’

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by Alexander Mercouris at the Duran As the Novichok ‘evidence’ collapses, the criminal investigation into the Skripal attack has become corrupted The events of the last few days in the Skripal case provide an object lesson of why in criminal investigations the rules of due process should always be adhered to. The reason the British now find themselves in difficulties is because they have not adhered to them. This despite the fact that – as they all too often like to remind us – it was the British themselves who largely created them. The single biggest unexplained mystery about the Skripal case is why it attracted so much attention so quickly. Within hours of Sergey and Yulia Skripal being found passed out on a bench the British media were feverishly speculating that they had been poisoned by Russia. This despite the fact that no information at that point existed which warranted such speculation, and despite pleas for the investigation to be allowed to take its course from the police and from the government minister responsible …

UK Govt rewords ambassador’s March 22 speech – makes it appear he DIDN’T say the novichok came from Russia – but he DID & there’s proof

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British Ambassador to Russia Dr Laurie Bristow briefed the international diplomatic community in Moscow on the UK Government response to the Salisbury attack, March 22 2018. The tweets have been scrubbed, spokespeople are currently lying or weasel-wording, but here are his own words. Here is the relevant section of Bristow’s words as they clearly appear in this footage and as the caption renders them: “…There is also no doubt that the Novichok was produced in Russia by the Russian state. This is how his words are being rendered on the UK government site – note the all-important missing “the”: By removing that “the”, which is beyond doubt there in the original, they are morphing Bristow’s statement from a direct accusation about “the” novichok allegedly used to poison the Skripals, into a general statement about the generic origin of the novichok class of nerve agents This looks like a flagrant lie. It looks like the real-life Minitrue in operation before out eyes, flushing reality down the Memory Hole, as we discussed earlier. It also looks like …

Skripal case: belief in Russia’s guilt looks to be based not on evidence but on a guess

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by Alexander Mercouris at the Duran British authorities admit have no proof poison made in Russia; entire case against Russia based on a classified assessment On the eve of the meeting of the OPCW’s executive council – convened by Russia and scheduled for tomorrow – we have had a highly revealing succession of statements about the Skripal case from the British authorities. The one which is attracting the most attention is the admission by Gary Aitkenhead, chief executive of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down, that whilst British scientists are able to confirm that the poison used in the attack and Sergey and Yulia Skripal was a ‘military grade’ Novichok type substance (the Russian authorities say the British have told them it is A-234), they cannot confirm that it was produced in Russia. We were able to identify it as novichok, to identify that it was military-grade nerve agent. We have not identified the precise source, but we have provided the scientific info to Government who have then used a number …

Some Further Thoughts on the Skripal Affair

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Barrister at Law James O’Neill offers some thoughts on the Skripal case and the recent judgement by Mr Justice Williams in the High Court Let the jury consider the verdict” the King said. “No, No” said the Queen: “sentence first, verdict afterwards”. “Stuff and nonsense” said Alice. The furore surrounding the alleged nerve gas poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia shows no signs of abating. It continuously puts one in mind of the quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland at the head of this article. For those of us with fond of memories of some of the traditional virtues of common-law justice, such as the presumption of innocence, the onus of proof upon the accuser, a verdict based upon evidence beyond reasonable doubt, and a prohibition on prejudicial pre-trial comment, it all seems like a very distant past. The latest development has been a group of nations, largely in the European Union, but also including United States, Canada, Australia and European minnows like Albania and Macedonia, joining the collective hysteria and expelling, …

Litvinenko and the Demise of British Justice

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by James O’Neill February 11th, 2016 In the wake of the bizarre and troubling elisions and falsehoods already apparent in the Skripal case, it seems an opportune time to revisit the equally controversial case of Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB officer and employee of Boris Berezovsky, allegedly poisoned with polonium on orders of the Kremlin in 2006. In a companion piece to our earlier study by British lawyer Alexander Mercouris, here barrister James O’Neill gives his own opinion on the case The publication on 21 January 2016 of the report by British Judge Sir Robert Owen on the death of Alexander Litvinenko was predictably seized upon by anti-Russian elements as confirmation of their conviction that Russia in general and President Putin in particular were the personification of modern day evil. Almost completely absent amidst the anti-Russian hysteria was any perspective on the history of Mr Litvinenko1; the circumstances leading up to his death; and any understanding of what a totally flawed exercise Owen’s inquiry actually was. Who Was Alexander Litvinenko? Litvinenko was generally described in …