So it looks like the British reaction to The Skripal Affair is assuming very serious proportions, especially with the most recent allegations that the nerve agent in question was Novichok.
(Incidentally, it is a gas so potent – an order of magnitude more so than VX – that carpet bombing a middle-sized city with it is projected to wipe out most of its population, but was apparently unable to even kill its main target).
PM Theresa May has now given Russia a two day deadline to prove it was not behind the attack, or else… Well, all sorts of wild suggestions are now flying on the Internet how the UK and “the West” ought to “punish” Russia.
I suppose this makes it as good a time to address this topic as any, in approximate order of severity.
Boycott FIFA World Cup 2018
The positive side is that the UK – so, presumably, England – will not have to worry about getting poisoned by the Russians “to slow them down” (as suggested by professional Russia basher Edward Lucas).
Not that anyone would notice.
On the other hand, if they could cajole the other Western countries into boycotting as well, it would be yet another humiliation for the kremlins, who seem to think they can buy their way into international handshakeworthiness by hosting very expensive international sporting events.
On the other hand, I don’t think that’s even a bad thing.
Kick out RT
This is being actively discussed.
This is going to seriously hurt RT’s international operations, since London hosts one of its two main foreign HQs. However, this gives Russia perfectly good cause to kick out the BBC and other British outlets. Hence why pro-Western journalists such as Max Seddon and Alexey Kovalev are beseeching Britain not to do it.
Since RT is not that successful anyway – viewership numbers are underwhelming, and 40% of its website visitors come from Russia itself – this will hurt Britain more than it hurts Russia.
The chances of other Western countries joining in are minimal, but if they do, I suppose the only result will be an across the board fold-up of the remaining major Western news bureaus in Moscow.
Further Financial Sanctions
E.g. prohibiting British investors from buying Russian sovereign debt, but this will have even less of an effect than the US doing it, which Mercouris explained here:
- Russia has massive foreign currency reserves (currently $450 billion) and its budget remains essentially balanced.
- Nothing stops it from floating bonds in the Asian money markets
So the effects from this will be negligible.
Step up Support for the Ukraine
Weapons supplies to the Ukraine are always an option but frankly Britain is unable to substantively change the military balance by itself.
However, the UK could recognize the DNR and LNR to be terrorist organizations.
This will, amongst other things, enable the UK to effect much more aggressive prosecution of Novorossiya supporters, should it also recognize the DNR and LNR to be terrorist organizations (which currently only the Ukraine does). In this case, Graham Phillips and Patrick Lancaster might want to apply for asylum in Russia.
Along with the nuclear/novichok “terrorism,” this will also lay further groundwork to:
Designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism
With associated further financial sanctions down the line, should the UK convince the US (realistic if Blackpill Timeline continues to pan out) and the EU (less likely but imaginable) to follow suit.
Cut Russia off from SWIFT
This is not something that the UK, nor even the US, can do by themselves; the organization itself is based in Brussels, Belgium, it is subject to Belgian and EU law, and is owned by its member financial institutions.
When Iran was booted out from SWIFT in 2012, it required the agreement of all 27 EU countries.
Russia has domestic alternatives to SWIFT (РАБИС, БЭСП) for commercial banks, and since 2014, the Mir payment system has been created for ordinary citizens. It is likely that internal transactions can be carried out without a hitch even in the event of a serious Western financial embargo.
As Alexander Mercouris points out, since 2014 the large state-owned banks that dominate the Russian banking system have been effectively cut off from borrowing in Western financial markets anyway. Consequently, it will be Western companies and businessmen with Russian investments who would be the most seriously affected, not to menton SWIFT itself, which will lose out from the loss in Russian institution membership fees.
Export Controls on Tech
Russia depends heavily on European (esp. German) machine tools.
A resurrection of Cold War style export controls on technology transfers to the USSR would hurt Russia badly. But this is not something that the UK or even the US seem to be capable of pushing on Germany and/or the EU.
Confiscate Russian oligarch assets in the UK/The West
This, ironically, presupposes a lack of rule of law in the West to an extent barely even imaginable in Russia. (For instance, nobody was confiscating Poroshenko’s chocolate factory in Lipetsk, to the chagrin of Russian nationalists).
But let’s suppose British judges are willing to overturn a millennium of legal norms just to punish Putler.
First, the UK will, at a single stroke, solve a large chunk of Russia’s problems with comprador elites, who make (or suck out) their money in Russia and spend it in London (Miami, Nice, Courchevel, etc.). The remote risk of losing your money due to a falling out with one of Putin’s henchmen sure beats the certain risk of losing your money by dint of being a “Russian oligarch” in the West.
Second, this will, to a great extent, constitute “friendly fire.” The Russian economic elites, especially those with ties to the West, are far more pro-Western than the population at large, and most Russians in London actually vote against Putin during elections.
Third, far from turning the oligarchs against Putin, it will just increase the already considerable control he has over them even further. This idea that pissed off oligarchs will feed Putin his own polonium tea is a beloved fantasy at places like /r/politics, but in the real world, it is 2018, not 1998, nor even 2003; Russia is no longer an oligarchy, but a “silovarchy” of security men clustered around Putin. With the “oligarchs'” remaining assets parked within Russia, their ability to create trouble for the regime will be even further diminished.
Cut Russia off from the Internet
This would again require the cooperation of the entire West, and if done forcibly – e.g., cutting the underwater cables connecting Saint-Petersburg to the world, as the Royal Navy quietly did to German telegram cables on August 4, 1914 – it would amount to a more or less overt declaration of war.
Will it cripple the Russian Internet? Of course not. The Internet perceives censorship as damage, and reacts by bypassing blockages. The West is not the world; short of NATO seizing control of the entire Russian border, it will retain access to the worldwide web, even though speeds will be much slower. The internal Internet (Runet) should not be greatly affected, since like China, Russia has taken care to build in redundancies that will enable it to function autonomously (ironically, efforts that Russian liberals have long interpreted as part of a totalitarian scheme to cut Russia off from the worldwide Internet).
Seizure of Russian Foreign Gold & Currency Reserves
Obviously, this is not something that the UK can do anything meaningful about, since less than 10% of Russia’s foreign currency reserves are in pounds sterling.
The USD and Euro each account for a bit more than 40% in Russia’s foreign currency basket, as well as a symbolic amount of yuan. Most of Russia’s sizable gold reserves ($80 billion) are parked in Russia itself.
Needless to say, seizing these assets will be illegal, extraordinary, and close to a declaration of war.
If anybody is going to do it in any possible universe, it is going to be the US (Europe is too fissiparous to push something like that through).
I am certainly not one of those people who predicts the Final Collapse of the petrodollar and US imperialism every year. But this will be a real risk if the US does something this insane. While seizing the assets of small and economically irrelevant “rogue states” is nothing special, doing this to Russia – as one of the world’s core Great Powers – will be an entirely different ball game that will discredit the American-dominated global financial system, most critically in the eyes of China (since what stops the US from eventually pulling something similar on them?).
Since this system massively favors America – the US dollar’s global reserve status artificially lowers risk premiums in the US, making foreigners willing to “irrationally” invest in US bonds at rates well beyond equilibrium – its unraveling will likewise hurt the US more than anyone else. This could even be the trigger that snaps the US back down to an economic level more correlated with the quality of its human capital.
Total Embargo
The Russian economy will crater, but Russia is at least self-sufficient in food and energy, while many EU countries – especially the former eastern bloc ones – depend on Russian gas to power their factories and heat their homes during the winter.
Now it’s not like they’ll be freezing to death. However, they will be paying through the nose for LNG imports, and the disruptions from the temporary interruption in Russian oil supplies will plunge the EU and probably the world into a depression.
Over time, Russia will orientate itself towards East Asia, especially China. Despite the necessity of it, this will not be a fast process, due to the paucity of the needed infrastructure as well as Russia’s poor understanding of Chinese realities. But this will be bridged with time, and as China continues to break out into technological leadership, the lack of access to Western tech and knowhow will become less and less of a debilitating factor for Russia.
Assassinate Putin
I do see this seriously suggested every now and then in comments (if not in official rhetoric, thankfully). Hopefully that’s because most non-crazy people recognize the downsides.
Conclusions
Some common themes:
- Most prospective sanctions are some combination of: Ineffective, hurt its initiators as much as Russia, or carry grievous geopolitical implications.
- Are not credibly capable of changing (alleged) Russian misbehavior
- Most of them are likely to stoke even further Russian resentment against the West, discredit its domestic pro-Western forces, and strengthen the regime politically, even where they weaken Russia economically.
But by far the most crucial factor is that those measures that do have the capacity to truly wreck the Russian economy need the cooperation of Asia, and by Asia, I mean China.
This is why Russia’s development of China ties has been Putin’s single greatest foreign policy success, besides which everything happening in Syria is basically irrelevant. No wonder that this development has been consistently decried by the liberal fifth column.
Whole thing will be forgotten in a few weeks. Britain is no longer a super-power with world influence – and it is now one whose opinions are no longer even have to be taken in consideration by the EU states.
Ex-spy Skripal poisoning ‘clearly came from Russia’ & ‘will trigger response’ – Tillerson
My money is on Radio Gleiwitz unfolding.
The scenario “Get busier in Syria” may be an option.
They do not have the budget or interest in Ukraine. Any financial donations would rapidly disappear in corruptions.
As for military equipment. The last time they sold to Ukraine, obsolete APCS, which were characterized as ‘moving coffins’:
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/britain-s-ugliest-cold-war-vehicle-is-back-in-ukraine-154aad7d2179
Thank you, Anatoly. You are doing precisely what Mr Unz prescribes.
It is the sort of piece that should be appearing in any serious journal or newspaper in the West. And they should be paying you the going rate for producing such a comprehensive piece. The fact that it is not is evidence of the continuing decadence and depravity of the Western MSM.
I will come off the fence, the hysterical reaction tells me this was a false flag, combine that with the claim of a Russian developed nerve agent. The neocons are just going wild on this, just no way would cautious Putin have made such a gamble on such a pointless gesture. Corbyn is still leading in several opinion polls, and that sort of thing makes some people absolutely desperate, throw in the failure of regime change in Syria, Trump and Brexit winning and an Israeli F16 being shot down in Israeli airspace and you can do crazy things.
I don’t know what is happening, but there clearly is an ever-increasing drumbeat of war propaganda against Russia. With talk of Russian “hybrid warfare” against the West (which Russia is supposedly already waging), basically any act of war against Russia should already be justified. This is getting truly unhinged, and the statements of western leaders are now not much different than they were towards, say, Iraq before they started a war against it. Russia is now viewed as a rogue state. This incident was clearly unhelpful, but may have been committed by someone else intent on making the situation even worse.
I think the risk of a nuclear war is now higher than it was during the Cold War.
Maybe it’s just advertisement for the latest Jennifer Lawrence vehicle?
Philosoraptor.jpg
I agree with AK on Russia organizing and hosting expensive global sports events, which ultimately provides NATO with some leverage over Russia. Russia would be much better off spending that money on their military and the country’s infrastructure.
Now, in the sphere of financial sanctions that can genuinely hurt the Russian economy, I don’t think that there is much that the West can do. If there was something they could do, they would have already done it circa 2014-16 when the Maidan along with the oil-price collapse gave NATO real hope that the much sought-after regime-change objective was at hand. Having said that, I wouldn’t put it past them to try something as stupid as kicking Russia off the SWIFT payments system, which will surely cause short-term problems for Russia, but that would be their last anti-Russian bullet gone.
Now, it shocks me that AK seems to be unaware of the epic stakes in Syria. Well, in brief, Russia be intervening in Syria has destroyed US-NATO-Zio plans for a New Middle East. Russia has basically saved Lebanon (Hezbollah) Syria, Iraq and Iran from total annihilation (see Zbig’s micro-state Doctrine) and is well on her way of constructing an anti-NATO sphere of influence in this most strategic region. With these countries on-board the Putler train, Russia will be able to control and take advantage of a massive chunk of the world’s oil & gas production, on top of preventing the pipelines that are a threat to Russia from ever happening and building those suit her. On the list of Russian achievements in the Middle East, one can add the total ruination of West-Turkey relations, for centuries a major thorn in Russia’s backside.
Oh, and one more thing. The EU cannot replace Russian gas, not even in the very long-term. For several reasons:
a) There is not enough LNG to supply EU gas demand.
b) There is not enough LNG terminal capacity to receive enough LNG even if it ever existed.
c) Building such infrastructure is extremely time-consuming as well as money-consuming. It would seriously damage the EU’s already pathetic competitiveness on the global markets.
d) LNG will always be more expensive than piped gas which affects the trade balance as well as competitiveness > Do you think that the Germans are approving Nord Stream II out of any sympathy towards Russia? No! They are simply f*cked otherwise.
e) In order for wind-energy to be in any way partially effective (which is a goal for the EU) you need to replace nuclear and coal generation so as to be able to balance the inevitable wild swings of power generation from the notoriously intermittent energy-source that is wind.
It’s not a question of ‘want’, but a question of ‘can’.
Iraq was a weak country, with no strong country protecting it.
It was seen that it ‘could’ be toppled Saddam, and this gave birth to a desire – or even the ‘want’ – to do so.
Human nature will follow through on doing something, if and to the extent that, it perceives that it can do something. And sometimes only for the sake of showing that it can do something. If people could get away with murder – well, – the world be rather unpleasant.
Nobody will make war on Russia, because there is no ‘can’. The situation is physically – not to mention politically and economically – impossible. Likewise nobody will make war on the Americans, or on China, or even on India.
What is possible, or can be done, is exactly what we see: Babies throwing their toys out of the pram: ‘Harsh statements and condemnation’. ‘A sanctions list of oligarchs who will be denied visas’. ‘Kicking out RT from London’ – (which would good for improving the country’s PR). ‘Refusal to send the Queen of England to the World Cup’. Add to list as suitable.
Another reason why Brexit is a good thing.
The more Western hostility toward Russia the better the sovereignty of the Russian people in the long run. As Karlin points out, Putin and the oligarchs especially seem to believe a modus vivendi with the West is a real possibility. Hence, the continued efforts to re-approximate the West rather than decisively moving to restore the autarky necessary to resist the globo-gayplex. Well, all they’ve got for their pains is repeated kicks to teeth. The Atlantic bloc is driven by the dogma of liberal managerialism, which is incapable of compromise since its a de facto religion.
AK, do you think the shift toward a more militarized elite will reduce corruption as the oligarchs are marginalized? What are the structural and policy changes required to reduce corruption?
Boycotting the world cup will save us the embarrassment of being knocked out by Pitcairn Island.
Didn’t the gas pipeline to China thing get canceled? Relations of Russia with China seem ok but nothing special.
Gas should start to be delivered to China from the Far-East from end of 2019.
http://www.ntv.ru/video/1446841/
I agree with you on Middle East.
I find it pretty bizarre May is pronouncing an ultimatum on Russia. It is not really becoming when the US does so on a much smaller country. May doing it to Russia is theater of the absurd. Doubly so, since the British government has spent so long dragging its feet on Brexit.
Two days is less time than they held Brittany Pettibone for, is it not?
You can be sure that May has something already lined up. I’d guess some special interest group came up with it and profits from it.
It will most likely come down to just the boycott of the World Cup. Then the question is how many other EU countries would join in and what would Germany do?
There would be an attempt to organise a parallel world cup for he boycotters (plus US) to soften the blow on the fans. But it is a long shot and the impact would be what exactly? How is not showing up for someone’s party going to accomplish anything?
I also think that boycotting the World Cup is the most likely scenario. Maybe even the whole thing was staged to give them an excuse to do that. They simply want to turn Russia into pariah state. If they continue with the same stupidity like banning Russia from the Olympics and boycotting the World cup, instead of turning Russia into pariah state they might turn them into piranha state and Russia definitely has some bite in them, enough to give the morons in the west a reason to consider entering uncharted waters.
They definitely don’t want a nuclear war, or any kind of war, with Russia. Though here’s this video from 2016, especially the senator’s face around 6:48. If you tell me this high ranking senator didn’t want to bomb the Russian forces in Syria, then what do you base your opinion on?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWG3D11lMiY&feature=youtu.be
Anyway, probably they don’t want a nuclear war, obviously. But they are intent on ramping up tensions beyond anything ever seen during the Cold War. When tensions run high, misunderstandings can lead to very bad things.
Where did that BS come from anyway? I remember reading something like that on MSM a few years ago, but was it just western/neocon wishful thinking and nothing else? “Some small potential delays -> it’s canceled!”
From the case against Saddam, to every other week in Syria, to this Skripal affair all we ever hear about is poison gas. Is it a cultural thing, or what? I mean presumbly you know which people will obsess more about murder by gas than others. In a neocon-led world you have wonder.
There is huge opposition to a WC boycott in the UK. Among other reasons, according to FIFA rules, if a country unilaterally stages a boycott they also forfeit their right to play in the next WC four years from now. There are two religions in the UK, the royal family and football. They’d be playing with fire by boycotting.
according to FIFA rules, if a country unilaterally stages a boycott they also forfeit their right to play in the next WC four years from now.
That doesn’t seem to be automatic, actually, and in any event the boycott (if it occurs) is not likely to be unilateral — the UK will only withdraw if it can convince others to follow suit.
I hope they don’t shut RT. Nice to have a choice of biased State broadcasters and alternative views.
Via the Financial Times, alcohol consumption falling bigly in Russia.
https://twitter.com/jfarchy/status/973442156022116352
In the meantime, “Russian nerve agent” is totally drowning out “thousands of girls raped” in the British media.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-worst-ever-child-grooming-12165527
As I’m always saying, we need to stand firm against Russian invasion, otherwise Britain could be filled with millions of foreigners who would rape our daughters!
They were knocked out by Iceland in the last European Championship. Iceland are in this year’s World Cup, so there is a chance they might do it again. You’re being a bit harsh on the England players. Pitcairn Island has about 200 people. Iceland has at least 300,00 people-about the same size as Plymouth !
Another response to add to AK’s menu, and one which seems to be under serious consideration.
From today’s Times
In both the US and EU, it has been stated on numerous occasions that cyber attacks could be considered an act of war. So is this really what the UK wants?
This is an HBD site. Population numbers in and of themselves don’t matter at all.
A few things which matter, in no particular order of importance:
1) British upper class children mostly play rugby instead of football. Mario Götze’s father is a university professor. I guess the lower classes in England have too much genetic load even for football talent. (There is some talent, but not enough to win a world cup.)
2) Icelanders are especially well suited to a number of sports. They are just big and tough. Genetics. For example they also dominate in strongman competitions.
3) In Iceland there was a great program of promoting team sports (also handball), while in England it’s less organized. Growing talent is just not that important to the clubs, who instead buy talent from abroad.
What I don’t understand is that how Hungary could perform so poorly in football. Orbán threw a lot of money on it (he built a number of shiny stadiums, where the same shitty teams play shitty football…), but it got us nowhere. Apparently Hungarian coaches (including those raising young players) are of very bad quality, stuck in the 1970s or something, and it’s very difficult to change that, since older coaches teach the younger ones. The system is also very corrupt, and by throwing money at it, Orbán only managed to perpetuate it. Players enjoy that now they can stay in Hungary for similar money as they would make in the German second league, but for less work or performance, so they prefer staying at home. Ironically, this might depress the Hungarian national team in the coming years.
LOL, this from the Murdoch machine is almost as good as those mysteriously lethargic England footballers. They’re going to … DDoS Infowars and Prison Planet! That’ll make Wusha think twice!
Lavrov said that if someone used chemical weapons, then the UK should notify the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons of which both Russia and the UK are member states, in accordance with the Chemical Weapons Convention. He also said that for Russia to answer the British ultimatum, they should first send a sample to Russia. According to Lavrov, as soon as the allegation of a Russian produced chemical weapon being used came up, the Russians sent a request to the UK so that their experts could sample it. Apparently it’s standard under the Chemical Weapons Convention. The Organization’s rules allow the UK to send a request to Russia to answer within 10 days (not 36 hours), and if I understand it correctly, the Russians are allowed to take samples.
In Britain, Football was historically the game of the skilled working class and lower middle class.
Players were recruited by professional clubs between the ages of 18 to 22 from low level feeder clubs, often called juniors.
Celtic, the first British club to win the European Cup (1967), exemplified this progression. Their captain was a trainee accountant whom they signed when he was 20 from a junior club. The team included plumbers, joiners, dental students and others who had all played for junior teams.
However, by the late 1960s, clubs were increasingly signing school boys on S Forms. And the game in Britain has never really recovered.
Obviously, you have a much better idea of who is going to be a good player when the player is 18 rather than 13. Also, under the old system, recruitment favoured disciplined young adults. The feeder clubs ensured a constant supply of talent to the professional clubs.
When I watch a professional game now, all too often I see players who were recruited because they could run around full size pitches when they were 13 or 14, not because they had any great football talent. The target group for modern British professional footballers is far too small, both in absolute numbers and also socially. Few parents will let their 14 year old son sign S forms unless they are absolutely sure he will make it. This means that players from an underclass background are now heavily overrepresented in the modern game. It’s why you’ve got Wayne Rooney, not Bobby Moore ( RIP )
The British game’s greatest successes were in the 1960s – England winning the World Cup, Celtic and Manchester United winning the European Cup. The present methods of recruiting and developing players only promise continued decline. [ And that’s without mentioning the preponderance of foreign players in the English Premier League ]
Okay, that makes sense.
I find it interesting that the UK didn’t follow the normal procedure according to the chemical weapons convention. I understand this was a murder (attempt) and not a normal chemical attack, could this be a reason? I tend to believe Lavrov more than Boris Johnson, but could he have lied? It’s important to establish the facts, so that we don’t spout easily disproved conspiracy theories.
And now Tillerson is out. Is Pompeo worse?
Not true, they are virtually the only people who play rugby, but football is still much more popular
My boss’s children in the UK go to public schools. His son plays rugby. He said no one in the school plays football. But they watch football on TV.
Probably yes, he’s a super-hawk on Iran and wants to kill the nuclear deal:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/trumps-cia-pick-pompeo-anticipates-rolling-back-the-disastrous-iran-deal/
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/making-trumps-bad-foreign-policy-even-worse/
Rugby Union is popular amongst middle and upper class British people, though less so than Football. They are not virtually the only people to play it. Rugby is popular in many rural areas such as the West Country of England, the Scottish Borders and some urban areas such as South Wales, the East Midlands of England. Rugby Union is markedly less popular in Scotland than elsewhere in the British Isles probably because modern Football first developed in Scotland and Rugny Union was seen as an English import.
It strikes me that Russia’s strategic situation today vs. the USA is basically the reverse of what it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1962, the USA and USSR had rough parity in conventional forces, but the USA had a huge strategic nuclear advantage. Today, the USA and Russia have rough strategic nuclear parity, but the USA has a huge advantage in conventional forces. I’m not sure in which situation nuclear war is more likely- although collectively, Western politicians sound a lot more openly bellicose towards Russia today, than they ever did during the Cold War.
Have a read of Why England Lose by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szynanski – a detailed analysis of football around the world.
Their key point about football demographics in England was that that clubs chose people from white or Caribbean working class backgrounds. Middle class people and Asians were excluded. The authors did an analysis of the backgrounds of the England squads from 1998 to 2006 and found only five players who had fathers with white collar jobs (one of these fathers ran the mail room where I worked). There was also an anti intellectual culture within English football
Other countries are much more inclusive, intellectual and therefore more successful
Some Public Schools in England play Rugby to the exclusion of Football, but nowadays most permit both. Of the 8 original Public Schools, Charterhouse and Westminster play Football mostly rather than Rugby. Chelsea FC has the most affluent fans ( and hooligans ) in England. Many of them are FPs of Charterhouse or Westminster.
I believe his son attended a school in Scotland.
They believe that they can get away with a conventional attack (for example in Syria), because they are stronger in conventional forces, and then the only option the Russians will have will be to commit suicide while simultaneously taking the Americans down with them.
This is a corollary of the belief that there is absolutely no way ever a nuclear war will happen. Well, if it is absolutely impossible, then why not start a conventional war while we are stronger?
It also nicely illustrates my view that the less people fear nuclear war, the more likely it becomes.
OT: Update on China and AI.
They now dominate spending on AI start-ups from private firms.
https://i.imgur.com/yn067Bn.png
That chart was taken from a recent report. You can read the full report here
They are now close to at par on patents. Patents is not always indicative of quality, of course, but it’s no longer true that most of Chinese patents are garbage and frankly hasn’t been true for quite some time.
Given that Chinese internet firms have access to a billion domestic customers to try things out at massive scale, it’s only a matter of time before China not only closes the gap but pulls ahead.
I find it interesting that the UK didn’t follow the normal procedure according to the chemical weapons convention. I understand this was a murder (attempt) and not a normal chemical attack, could this be a reason? I tend to believe Lavrov more than Boris Johnson, but could he have lied?
He certainly didn’t lie about the established procedure. And the procedure should apply since the matter involved (use of proscribed chemical) certainly falls within the remit of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Here is the relevant section of the Convention (from Article IX, “Consultations, Cooperation and Fact- Finding”):
The fact that the UK didn’t follow the established procedure would seem to be a further sign of the current hysteria that is reigning there.
But does it mean the Russians have a right to get samples? Maybe they should answer the same question within ten days (instead of thirty-six hours), but are they allowed to inspect the evidence against them? Theoretically they should be able to answer without a sample, since they presumably know if they used it, and can easily check if anything is missing from its stocks.
Questions and presumably a need for samples only arise in case they issue a categorical denial of both – they haven’t used such chemicals, and their stocks are intact (no theft has happened).
In any event, in a democracy a free press would ask the British government the following questions:
1) how do they know that the poison was produced in Russia and nowhere else?
2) why didn’t they follow the standard procedures?
3) why didn’t they contact the OPCW? (Which, I believe, would also be standard procedure.)
And now this.
Legally, there are no Public Schools in Scotland. There are private or independent schools. Nearly all are non-boarding. This is because The Church of Scotland and the other Calvinist denominations did not approve of boarding.
There are a mere handful of independent boarding schools in Scotland. I think your boss’s son may have attended one. Gordonstoun excepted, they were all founded by English immigrants or persons of English origin in the C19th. These persons nearly all had strong connections with the Episcopal Church, a branch of the Church of England. Even today they are culturally quite distinct from all other independent schools. They are ( English ) Public Schools in all but name.
I don’t think it’s a boarding school, he lives in Scotland.
I actually bought a ticket for England Panama game in the world cup i really hope they are not going to boycott the world cup
In some cyberpunk universe, a Vory-Wagner conspiracy is successfully plotting against the world.
Maybe they’ll use it as an excuse to confiscate Chelsea FC from Abramovich.
But does it mean the Russians have a right to get samples? Maybe they should answer the same question within ten days (instead of thirty-six hours), but are they allowed to inspect the evidence against them?
This is splitting hairs, the Convention clearly cannot deal with all possible eventualities. It clearly sets forth that there is to be an “exchange of information and consultation”, which is a 2-way process. The Russians can presumably answer that without examining the sample they are unable to say whether or not it came from their laboratories, which is an entirely reasonable position.
By the way, former UK ambassador Craig Murray has a very interesting article out today on his website. He discusses the possible link to Steele and the dossier, observing that
He also mentions another possibility which I have to admit hadn’t specifically occurred to me:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/03/russian-to-judgement/
OT:
Do you know what might be triggering this?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-13/hungarys-central-bank-repatriate-its-gold-london
No idea. As they wrote in the article, the amount is minuscule, and it’s an international trend including countries like the Netherlands or Austria.
This looks like a staged media event. It follows ‘normal procedures’ for media demonisation. Johnson and Theresa May seem to be in the dark. They are being told menacing facts and put under pressure to show leadership. Leaders cannot show skepticism during a crisis like this – it is a peer event, absolute unity and loyalty are required. A professional shows up in your office and in front of all your colleagues says that the ‘poison originated in Russia’. So of you go issuing threats.
Unfortunately, this has a dynamic of its own and we may see different players act out their roles with very little room to manoeuvre.
Any chemical attack would qualify as an ‘attempted murder’. This is exactly when the Chemical Weapons procedures should be used. But that is very slow and Britain would lose control of the story. This might end up the same as all the similar media stories, a lame, ambiguous statement that allows for deniability (‘probably’ will be used a lot). After Vietnam and a few other embarrassments, Western elites decided that ‘media domination’ is a necessary part of any conflict. There is an obvious conflict with Russia, so media acts its part. What difference does it make if we all get pulverised to dust what stories were the two sides exchanging right before it happens? I think Putin stated that ‘world without Russia is not worth it’ for a reason, we are in a very volatile period. Tillerson gone, if Medvedev or Lavrov resign, it might be time to head for the hills (preferably in the Southern hemisphere).
By the way, in Slovakia football players from the Hungarian minority are traditionally among the best. Maybe something about coming from smaller towns and villages with a strong ‘tribal’ mentality. Even so the national team has been a disgrace. Maybe if England chooses to boycott, we might get a shot as a replacement?
The huge “Power of Siberia” Russо-Chinese gas pipeline is still under construction and at a Gazprom board meeting at the beginning of March this year (just a week ago or so) CEO Miller announced it’s about three quarters finished (1580 kilometers worth of piping and support infrastructure have been put in place to date, out of a planned total length of some 2158km).
I reckon the tap will be turned on by 2019 sometime, so all of that has been on schedule without any significant hitches.
Media (well, Western ditto at least) announced that the project had run into a wall and was likely going to be cancelled as soon as they caught a whiff of some reports on minor cost overruns pertaining to a certain section of it. Needless to say, it wasn’t that simple.
This reporting approach applies to all Russian construction projects, really. On occasion, there are some real hitches (such as the scandal-ridden, hugely costly and long overdue St. Petersburg stadium), but the things get built anyway eventually. And it’s literally nothing compared to the cost overruns and delays seen in (for instance) the Big Dig in Boston or the Hallandsas tunnel in Sweden… Happens to the best of us. In Russia, good old corruption might be a bigger factor behind such issues than it is elsewhere, but the issues themselves certainly aren’t unique, whatever causes them.
Most of the time it’s just bullshit though, based on (likely deliberate) misinterpretations of the actual scope and extent of the projects and their budgets (as illustrated by the infamous Sochi “roads of caviar and gold” and everything), or based on an absolutely autistic fixation on even the slightest hiccup (such as one railroad approach to the Crimean bridge needing a slight redesign from the original plan, which immediately gave rise to dozens of headlines all over the place a few months ago).
No it was all over local media as well last year. I guess it is how China are negotiating.
Yes I posted above it is expected around the end of 2019
http://www.ntv.ru/video/1446841/
Dr Richard North has information about where the batch of Novichok was manufactured. North is a Russophobe, a close colleague of the late Neocon Helen Szamuely, so many of his opinions can be taken with a dose of polonium. However, he is usually very good on the facts.
So as well as the agent being possibly sold or dispersed, we also have direct US involvement. Any bets on some of this ending up in the custody of MOSSAD ?
For the full article. see
http://www.eureferendum.com/
I am going to that one too, assume I could day trip it by train if needs be.
The two sides would just like to bomb each other’s Arabs.
The Washington (more aggressive politicians) want to bomb the Kremlin supported Arabs (Assad’s forces).
While the Kremlin, it’s already been bombing the Washington supported Arabs (the FSA/opposition).
If they accidentally hit each other’s forces inside Syria, then they would look for an excuse to ‘climb down’ or de-escalation, after various rhetoric. Even Turkey did this – and both sides climb down, and Turkey is a lot less scary than the United States.
From Moscow obviously. I have a friend who lives in Kolomna though and I was wondering if you can train it from there to Nizhny Novgorod?
After the Cold War, the West never gave any breathing room to Russia. They placed a puppet in power (Yeltsin), pushed NATO eastwards, destroyed Russian allies in the Middle East (and would have severed Russia from China, if that had been possible – but it was not), and of course staged a coup in the Ukraine.
The Yeltsin government, which was weak, unpatriotic and deluded by Western prescriptions of “no-tarrifs” and “laissez-faire”, essentially annihilated the Russian defense-industrial capability and tanked Russian economic growth.
In the Yeltsin years, Russia’s economy was restructured not thoughtfully, but disastrously. Like forcing so much medicine and surgery on a sick patient too soon, that he starts dying before your eyes. All of it because of Yeltsin’s love for (and Western advice in favor of) lurching, vomit-inducing “reform”. Gradual reform – NO! The nineties saw Russia drive right off a cliff.
I can only conclude that the West sees Russia as an eternal, immutable, irreconcilable ENEMY. Note, I mean Russia, not the Soviet Union. Why? Because Russia is an “Alien Civilization”, with paradigms and values very different from the West’s, and with enough power, depth and size to not have to “bend the knee” to the the reconstituted Roman Empire – into which the West has morphed.
Was it Zbigniew Brezinski who said “I like Russia so much that, where Russia sits now, I want there to be many Russias, ten Russias or more”. Obviously so that any given society in that vast space can be more easily manipulated and intimidated. Such is Western thinking.
Now we are at the end-game. Russia MUST be dissolved and their civilization extinguished between 2018 and 2020, or the window will start closing on the Western Empire. The multi-polar world is not merely coming, it is absolutely here.
Russia’s options multiply, and there are yet other powers in the world who will not “bend the knee” with whom Russia has natural partnership. These other civilizations grow in power, and their numbers multiply.
IT’S NOW OR NEVER! And so the American and European elites have become utterly hysterical.
How interesting. On the cui bono front, Russia would surely rank well below these two countries.
Has anyone else noticed how the following story, reported by the BBC shortly after the incident, has disappeared down the proverbial memory hole?
A bit astounding, given the toxicity of Novichok (5-8 times the toxicity of VX), don’t you agree?
Some additional (and highly relevant) tidbits, from Weapons of Mass Casualties and Terrorism Response Handbook, published in 2006 by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons:
Yes but it is complex train from Gatulin station main station in Kolomna to Kazan voksal in Moscow then train from Kursky Voksal in Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod total travel time about 7 hours 2 to Moscow about 4 to Nizhny Novgorod see Russian railways website available in English
If they cut Russia off of SWIFT, they would have to make payments through banks connected to the Russian messaging system. Sberbank is present in Germany and other EU countries.
This and a lot of the US’s actions over the past 4-6 years is just doing reputational damage to Western institutions that took decades to build. Those rich foreigners who have propped up the British economy since the 70s are going to disappear.
The only appropriate response from Russia is to give May the middle finger and tell her to f*ck off.
He might be better for Russia.
Time will tell.
Has Oceania always been at war with Eurasia or Eastasia again now?
Oceania is now at war with both.
By the way am I the only one who, when reading Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, found it odd that Eastasia and Eurasia never allied with each other? I was always wondering how both were duped by the treacherous Oceania, which, as a result, won the war eventually.
My colleagues at work totally believe that Putin is now murdering all people critical of him.
The power of propaganda.
Suicide, family dispute, vindictive former colleague, triple agent gone wrong, false flag by anti Putin oligarchs pushing for a Magnitsky Act, Ukrainian revenge act, Mossad could do it but I can’t see their motivation for a false flag.
Is the death of Beresovsky’s accountant a coincidence? When they bought Aeroflot he complaint that 20% (I think) of the wage bill was going on secret service operatives. By the way Glutsky was “rescued” by Lugovy who then did for Litvinenko. Maybe it’s middle ranking DVR or FSB doing a clear out. Since 2006, Russia has a law that allows the FSB to carry out overseas assissinations without seeking permission.
The scale of the one sided media from McMafia to Red Sparrow to Putin as a Tsar has been breathtaking. Not to mention the US election claims. Is this cultural or some one’s PR? The Hermann press is more negative to Russia than the UK press but this hysteria hasn’t happened in Germany.
A couple of days ago I caught myself thinking that someone had heard that the Mirror would drop loot and decided to proactively do something outrageous to generate noise for a news cycle or two.
Does “Novichok” even exist. I had never heard of it and it sounds like something out of exposition time of Navy CSI or Anime. Or mabye a product of Mr Porochenko’s factories.
Frankly sounds like “Red Mercury”, which was the Slavic Planet Killer material or something back in the 90s. Can’t remember.
Why would such a law exist? Seems like it gives an opportunity for individuals and small cliques within the FSB to unilaterally start international incidents.
Actually, as far as I know, there is no such law. The law in question allows the FSB (I think the president needs to be involved) to liquidate terrorists abroad without a trial at home. I think there should be some kind of danger, so that random people cannot be murdered willy-nilly, at least in theory. The law can probably be abused, like all laws, but needless to say, similar laws exist in the sole existing liberal democratic superpower as well, the US President can also order the liquidation of terrorists abroad, the most famous example being the liquidation of Osama bin Laden.
Help please!
From tonight’s Sky News:
So it absolutely has to be Russia, since novichok is like a “fingerprint”, right?
From yesterday’s Daily Mail:
So they can be created from chemicals freely available worldwide, and it is likely that other nations have stockpiles.
Do you see my problem?
Isn’t that what the Russians have been doing in Syria. Executing Russian-born Islamists who have gone to fight for ISIS and the like.
So it’s easy to create and handle and basically anyone could produce it. Sounds like a signature.
No, Syria is a war, they don’t execute them, they kill them in action.
Sorry, it’s over.
Navy CSI bullshit of the highest order. The noise of July 1914.
How is that clown being pulled out of the woodworks all of a sudden? What is “technical counter-intelligence” and what does it have to do with the chemical weapons institute.
Like suddenly getting inundated by propaganda until they barf themselves to death. Was David Kelly lucky? We will never know.
“Shockingly”, modified insecticides are modified insecticides. Aum Shinrikio can do it. I could probably brew up some VX in the basement myself but I would kill myself doing so. Big whoop.
By the way, being a Russian whistleblower who defects to the US seems to be a lucrative profession. The chemical weapons scientist referred to in the above article, Vil Mirzayanov , can be found in the New Jersey white pages. His nearly 300 m2 house sits on a 2.5 acre (1 hectare) lot and is currently valued at nearly $1 million.
I am an expert of this, because I read the relevant Wikipedia articles.
His job was to check from the outside of the facility if the agent or any sign of the illicit activities inside could be detected, and to prevent such detection.
I read the book a long time ago. IIRC, no one won the “war” because no one wanted to actually win; they wanted foreign bogeymen, so they (all 3) kept it going indefinitely.
No one won.
Yes, you have 48 hours to prove you didn’t kill someone with an undetectable poison. Seems like you should use Monty Python as your defense attorney.
No doubt helped by the stupidity and ignorance of the younger generation. I am over fifty and by the time I left school at 18, I had a reasonable grasp of my country’s history and modern history generally. I had studied a wide range of literature. Hell, I had even read Virgil in the original Latin. I’ve been a fan of the Romans ever since- you don’t need to tell me what the Romans did for us. Despite its failings, I felt the system encouraged me to think. I remember the heated debates we had in the Debating Society about politics, religion and social matters – everything from the Neutron Bomb to the Equality or otherwise of women. I proposed the case that Women should not have the vote as they were far too emotional and irrational. I don’t know if that would be possible now.
In the British Isles where I live, apart from some independent schools, most state schools teach a dumbed down, simplistic curriculum with ever increasing political correctness. Independent thinking is not encouraged. The aim, no doubt, is to make young people more susceptible to state propaganda.
I would hope the situation in Hungary is not as bad as in Britain. Correct me if I’m wrong.
No, you’re wrong. While in the earlier chapters they explain that no one wanted to win, in the last chapter Oceania actually does win the war by capturing all of Africa. This ends the war and results in a victory for Oceania.
Of course it’s implied that the war might be restarted at a later point in time, perhaps after the other two powers ally with each other, since it’s not a total victory in the sense that Eurasia is not destroyed (and Eastasia was an ally at that point).
iirc the war in the book was going on indefinitely…and its history was constantly being rewritten.
But has been a long time since I read it, and I didn’t really find its depiction of totalitarianism that convincing.
EDIT: ” This ends the war and results in a victory for Oceania. ”
But how can we know this isn’t just more propaganda?
I don’t think it’s substantially better. Especially not in the long run. Orbán neglects education, which has the side effect of making teachers hate him. Teachers tend to be leftists anyway, but it seems they have become overwhelmingly so in the last few years. High schoolers are now often protesting the government, there have been demonstrations against Orbán by them (nominally about some issues with education, but obviously it was political, including some of the slogans etc.), so it’s probably a mistake which will bear its rotten fruits over the long run.
OK, you’ve convinced me that is one the present British government will certainly adopt.
I do think, though, that it’s slightly misguided speculating about how much the UK regime can hurt Russia. The objective of those hyping the incident (who may or may not be the ones responsible for the incident itself – who knows?) is not really to damage Russia, the objective is to create a more confrontational relationship between the US and Russia, and between the US’s European satellite states and Russia, in order to reduce commercial, cultural and political contacts and ultimately prevent any diplomatic rapprochements.
As such, it seems unlikely any of the meaningfully risky or costly measures will be taken. Rather, they will pursue the ones that create maximum propaganda impact for the least risk and cost.
The victory in Africa was a fiction – it did not happen.
Goldstein’s book (which O’Brien – one of its authors – allows is accurate “as a description”), explains that actual fighting between the three powers involves small groups of highly-trained specialists, and where a major operation is undertaken it is usually a surprise attack against an ally. The book adds “despite the endless slaughters reported on the telescreens, the great battles of earlier wars… have never been repeated”.
It’s a caricature of totalitarianism. Of course, real totalitarianism didn’t look like that. But consider it’s mental techniques for the true believers.
Crimestop: totally exists in true believers of any ideology.
Doublethink: totally exists, like the simultaneous belief of a decaying, aging, collapsing Russia, and one that is capable of remote mind control of millions over the internet.
He describes how the highest ranks are the best informed of reality (i.e. the falsity of their own propaganda) while also being the truest believers. Like Nazi leaders being the best informed of the precariousness of the military situation, yet being the most fervent believers in the possibility of a final victory. Or Bolshevik leaders knowing that they are operating a terror regime with luxuries for the select elite and starvation for the masses, yet also believing that this is somehow a revolution for a better future.
Or the slogans of the Party: War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Diversity Is Strength. Etc.
It’s little wonder it’s still quoted so often.
Risk of war, or risk of nuclear war? When the major nuclear arsenals are officially back on “launch on warning”, then I’ll believe we face a risk of nuclear war that is of a similar order of magnitude to what I remember from the late Cold War.
Risk of a great power war, I agree. I’ve noted recently (and I’m not the only one) that the situation in Syria is smelling more and more like 1914 (but with timescales in minutes and hours, rather than days). The US regime’s latest repeated and open threat to (illegally, but of course laws don’t apply to the goodies) attack Syrian government forces over the East Ghouta clean-up provides a direct path to war if either side misjudges its responses by an iota.
A war is actually fairly likely at the moment – I suspect the US regime will at some point attack Syrian government forces, and any Russian response that results in significant US casualties will put the US regime on the spot about responding in turn. There’s no way of knowing for sure how either government will respond in those circumstances, and much depends upon details around the scale of any attacks and the particular targeting. It’s a disturbingly chaotic and analytically difficult situation.
As to whether it would escalate to a nuclear exchange, well we all have to hope at least one side will take one of the various inevitable opportunities to deescalate before we reach that point. It seems unlikely it would go that far, though. I’ve long been a believer that nuclear weapons are unique in human history in that they make it almost impossible for the decision maskers to believe they won’t suffer the worst consequences of any war they start – “win” or “lose”.
We could imo easily see a limited exchange of fire between Russian and US forces in Syria at any time in the next days or weeks. It mostly depends upon what orders the Russians in theatre have and are given in response to events.
I read it as a teenager and tbh have forgotten much of the details…but iirc one thing I didn’t find convincing was its depiction of sexuality, with the party wanting to control all intimate relationships, only love of Big Brother being allowed, everything being relentlessly politicized. I think that’s something too obviously repellent for most people. Entertainment in Nazi Germany wasn’t like that…it rather presented idyllic, mostly apolitical scenes of family life many people even today would probably find attractive (I suppose similar motives existed in Stalin’s Soviet Union). Totalitarianism (if that concept is even useful, and not just Cold war propaganda) needs to present a credible narrative that it will improve the lives of its adherents, or at least of their collective, so the sacrifices will be worth it. And both Nazism and Soviet communism did provide highly attractive visions whose appeal shouldn’t be hard to see…Orwell’s big brother was a caricature imo.
And iirc it’s also implied in 1984 that the inner cadres are quite cynical and may not even believe their own ideology, only are into it for power worship. That’s also unrealistic imo…Nazis, Fascists, Communists on the highest levels certainly did believe in their ideology.
But as I wrote it’s been a long time since I read it (almost 20 years), so I may not quite remember it all correctly.
Orbán neglects education, which has the side effect of making teachers hate him.
This was the problem in Britain, Margaret Thatcher thought that state education would continue as before. Her successor, John Major, had the attitude: ignore it and hope it goes away. Neither did anything to prevent the increasing left-wing influence in state education, especially in Labour-run local councils. Of course, not helped by very few Conservative politicians having children at state schools.
Thatcher didn’t even really try to stop or reverse the abolition of grammar schools, just pathetic.
Or execute them after they have been caught and their identity confirmed.
No doubt one day we will find
The loss of grammar schools did quickly stop under Lady Thatcher, but there was no reversal of policy to open new ones or reopen old ones. State Schools were left in the claws of local authorities, most of them Labour-run. There were no new ideas about how to improve State Schools or stop the slide in standards or the increasing left-wing influence.
The same could be said about other areas of policy, whether immigration or health care, The Thatcher Government focussed on a limited number of economic matters, often to the detriment of social and cultural matters, which came back to haunt the Conservatives later.
I am and have been a life long Socialist
I have also volunteered to defend my country
Be that as a sense of duty or perceived adventure
I try to maintain a healthy level of cynicism and try to be pragmatic
I try not to believe all the news as presented by headlines
Over the past week – and despite all of the other shocking and incredible news globally – I have become astonished by the events unfolding in Salisbury
I am not anti Russian – if anything I have great respect for Russian people
But I am pragmatic and I do truly believe that any country that allows a minority of people to take control and bully the majority by fear can not be trusted
And therefore there is no doubt – in my small mind at least – Russia have (sic) done wrong in the UK
They have imported and used with agents with intent to kill a chemical agent – a nerve agent – that even they do not truly understand the extent of illness and death it can cause
There is no doubt Russia will not confess or take any responsibility
But we as a proud people should not be afraid to confront a bully and I am willing to commit again to the defence of my country – irrespective of its faults – because I will not be bullied
If we all stand up and defend what we believe to be right and fair and just we will be on the right side if history
Hi Randal
If indeed that is your real name (unlikely I think)
In your 2nd para I laugh as you say “… UK regime …” Only someone from an actual regime would use that verbiage – which i hazard a guess is translated verbiage
Next sentence – “… hyping the incident …”
Is it hyped? Is this a country with a history of overly dramatically hyping terror? I would suggest quite the opposite
IMHO we to our risk undermine and downplay serious incidents
So why on earth would we scare the shit out of the people of Salisbury
As per my earlier post I am not a supporter of this government
But I do believe we have been wronged and I do challenge the like of you
You think Randal is a Russian troll?
Sorry, but you’re an idiot.
BrummyGav
Your amusing message cannot possibly be anything else than a pastiche, is it not?
The “socialist” hint is too good to be true.
You fucking assholes commenting on British society truly have not got a clue
Any one of you that were privileged enough to come here with the money your parents stole from your homelands went to schools that isolated you from people like me
Lucky for you and lucky for me
Please do not share your bullshit as if you know the people of a country you clearly loathe and despise
Dear god please just go home – oh you can’t right
Wankers
Yes, it does look like they went to the schools that actually taught them English.
What did tick you off? Do you care that much about football?
An idiot? Yeah probably
Is Randal a Russian troll? No idea but I didn’t say that – merely questioned the use of language
But hey thanks for the feedback
If y’all think the UK government have made up this whole Salisbury thing and that Russia is not responsible …
Well god bless ya
Whichever god y’all believe in
Well, I don’t believe that…I just have no idea what’s behind this whole affair or who’s responsible.
Randal is clearly English btw, insinuations that he must be some sort of Russian agent are idiotic. This tarring of anyone who has doubts about the narratives pushed by Western establishments as a traitor or fool in thrall to foreign powers is just tiresome, if you can’t state your opinion without resorting to such tactics, don’t be surprised about negative reactions.
Hey Danny Cha
You seriously gonna bitch on my use o’ my native language?
You pompous piece O shite
Ain’t ever gonna play that tune dude
Tosser
You write like a semi-literate britbong moron – probably because that’s what you are (a Comprehensive lad if I’m any judge)
Instead of mutilating the language that is your dying people’s gift to the world, why not take a hike and do what comes naturally to you?
That means suck down two dozen cans of cheap lager and collapse in a gutter, facedown in your own vomit while your fat slag girlfriend lolls on the pavement, waving her hideously flabby thighs in the air.
I don’t know if I need to add – as some free advice in such scenarios.
Spread out against the most fashionable cities of the West. while are entire children of kremlevskoy verkhushki.
In particular will be safe places (which we may designate as ‘spaces of calm’) in time of nuclear warfare to go to: – Limassol, London, Amsterdam (e.g. Mariya Putina), Paris (e.g. Miss Peskova), New York (e.g. Miss Lavrova), Nice, Saint-Tropez (e.g. Sechin’s yacht).
On the other hand, nuclear missiles may be freely landing in places which are not fortunate to be considered ‘fashionable to live’, or even labelled as ‘not cool’ amongst the children of the Kremlin elite – Kansas city, Dortmund, Poznan, Glasgow, Minneapolis?
@German dude
Risk of boredom or repetition – I never accused anyone of being a Russian troll – so done with that
I share your cynicism that any government – be they Western or Eastern or Asian or whatever – would lie to protect their regime is absolutely possible (in fact more than likely)
Is it possible the Salisbury event is some UK internal fuck up and they’re looking for a scapegoat? Damn of course at some level you could write a conspiracy to see that
But at risk of seeming to be a right twat there is no way it is and therefore there are 2 choices
1) it was a state approved execution assault on foreign soil
2) rogue agents determined to avenge the acts of a traitor
Choice 1 is real bad and affects us all
Choice 2 – we’ll just take care of business and we all carry on with the status quo
Going back to my initial post I honestly rarely care too much
But this shit takes me back too many years and to a time I thought we had left behind us
Take my view sincerely or not I honestly don’t give a shit
Pavlo
You poor sad chap
Do you truly think insulting me means anything?
So weak and so sad
The next time you see your therapist share this dialogue
Hopefully it can help
Angrily declaiming that you don’t care about being insulted evinces your butthurt.
Responding with the most generic insult possible compounds this impression and illustrates your low intelligence and limited verbal creativity. But nobody would expect more from a Comprehensive lad, would they?
There’s a third possibility, that some other group or state is behind this.
I don’t think I’m into conspiracy theories (and have been sceptical of some of the “alternative” explanations for various incidents over the last few years – I don’t doubt that Russian-backed rebels did accidentally shoot down MH17; and I think it’s quite possible that Assad’s forces did use poison gas…I just don’t care much about it), but so much strange stuff previously thought unimaginable has happened over the last few years that I wouldn’t exclude any possibilities anymore (just think of all the efforts in the US to paint Trump as a Russian stooge…beyond bizarre imo).
I agree that it would be pretty bad if this was an assassination ordered by the Russian state…I just can’t see though why Putin and his inner circle would want to order something like this, what do they gain from it? Humiliating/angering Britain just for the sake of it seems rather pointless.
Hey Vorotynsev
Firstly – have to admit I had to look up “pastiche”
Way beyond my lower level of education
What a great word
The good news is I copied or mirrored no cunt
So you and your pompous bunch of trolls can go fuck yourselves
Thanks for teaching me something new today
Dobre
Oh poor dear Pavlo
You really are a sad creature
Was my response angry? I think that was just your perception
You are clearly in need of help you poor poor sole
To be clear I was not a Comprehensive lad
Nor am I highly educated and certainly not to your level
But you are a sad and deranged individual in need of help
Please seek it soon before you do harm to yourself or others
LOL! OK “BrummyGav”.
I mentioned the reason I use the term “regime” for the US and for countries within the US sphere here a couple of months ago – it’s a conscious choice:
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/the-phantom-list/#comment-2183785
“Is it hyped?” A supposed attempted murder of a foreign former spy is front page news for days (soon to be weeks, no doubt) with hysterical “meetings of COBRA” and endless speculative bollocks about whodunit, as though it really matters and as though the people “investigating” it and telling us the supposed results of their investigations aren’t established liars anyway?
If it really is a murder of a former foreign spy by a foreign government then it’s a diplomatic matter of as much or as little importance as the government chooses to make it, and no particular concern for the vast majority. Though frankly you’d have to be pretty stupid to seriously think the Russian government did it, since it gains them nothing and likely costs them a lot. Especially based upon the mere word of the same kinds of British government and media liars as enabled Blair’s and Cameron’s wars. If it’s some other kind of crime, then it’s just another sensational crime event, that should be forgotten in a couple of days.
Unless people with power and influence see something to be gained out of making it a big, lasting story by pretending to believe “Russia did it”.
Have a guess which will happen.
Most likely because there are powerful people who want to continue, and to further whip up, a confrontation of Russia that suits their various ulterior agendas. It’s much the same as the way consent for the Iraq war was manufactured with “experts” and trusted government figures, and media mouthpieces, exaggerating or outright misrepresenting evidence and conclusions, or how the same thing was done for the attack on Libya by making up a supposed “humanitarian emergency” to justify that disastrous war.
It’s hardly anything new, for those who have been paying attention for the past few decades.
As has been pointed out, you really have no idea what “the like of me” is. Nor it seems do you have much of a clue about how the world around you works, which presumably explains why you’ve seemingly soaked up all the superficial propaganda about Russia you could find, in a media that’s frankly full of the stuff.
You seem not to have noticed that Putin’s support and general popularity in Russia is well above what senior politicians here command.
ROFL! Yeah, that’s pretty much what the interventionists said about the attacks on Iraq and on Libya, and the attempt to hand Syria over to bloody jihadist chaos by overthrowing the government.
Great stuff. Do you ever intend to try learning from experience?
@German
I’m certainly open to the idea that a third party executed the attack and all avenues of investigation should be thouroughly looked at
However it seems critical to solving the incident that Russia support the investigation and provide as much technical physical and logistical support they can
If it’s rogue elements of their security services or material that was stolen during the post Cold War transition then fine – figure it out and find it and stop it
Who the hell wants this stuff out there
The last thing any of us want is conflict
We live in a mad world but it’s all we have
We should all want to try to make it better
Yo Randal
You LOL at my tag -why? Location and name all in one – odd reaction
I’ll just surmise your verbose response
You don’t see why Russia would do what the government have stated
I just lapping g up the cool aid and just plain stupid
And governments lie
Well I agree with my last summation above – governments do lie
And maybe the Russian government are innocent
And yeah maybe I am just a Schmuk who buys whatever the headlines are in the Mail or the Sun or the good old Beeb
But seriously if you’re going to buy what comes out of the Kremlin or Russian news as gospel then your just as dumb as I am
So good luck with that
This is site attracting nonconformists and sceptical insomniacs. i.e. demographic who usually don’t like their leadership/elite wherever they are living.
Generally whichever country people are living or coming from, it’s which leadership/elites they are attacking.
I.e. Randal attacks British elite – he is probably British. If he starts attacking Russian elite – he is probably Russian or Ukrainian. And if he was criticizing Bulgarian parliament, or Algerian constitution – he would probably be Bulgarian, or Algerian, respectively.
Speaking of which, how did you find us here? We are hardly mainstream and well advertised.
Because it’s not your real name and you were implying that the tag I use might not be my real name as though it was some kind of snide criticism. You might well be someone called Gavin from Birmingham, but you aren’t anyone called “BrummyGav”, that’s for sure.
Yes, that’s a reasonable summary. Though ignorance is not the same as stupidity, and it might be the former rather than the latter. But I’ve yet to see any really plausible explanation of what the Russian government could possibly gain from having committed this alleged crime that would even begin to make up for the trouble it will likely cause for them over the next few months if those manipulating the story get their way (and they usually do).
It’s as though the Russian government is simultaneously so stupid they just can’t help handing their worst enemies a new stick to beat them with, and so cunningly clever that they are some kind of existential threat to the world.
I try to judge the words of governments and media on their particular merits, and don’t believe any of them implicitly. Though it happens that in international relations (my particular area of interest), the Russian government’s version has in the past two decades often been closer to reality than that of the US or UK regimes, at least in the broad thrust if not always in the awkward details.
That mostly reflects the reality that it has been the US and its poodles (such as we have degenerated into) that have been the powerful aggressors seeking to reshape the world, and the Russians have been the weaker party, resisting where they can.
In this case I don’t think the Russians didn’t do it because the Russians deny it. I don’t think they did it because nobody worth trusting as far as I can spit has given me any reason to believe they were responsible, and the idea that they were makes no sense on its face.
But whoever did it (and we will probably never find out), there’s no doubt whatsoever who is pushing the story in the direction of confrontation, and it’s all the usual suspects.
Well it is 3.30am here.
@Danny C
Firstly I hope the short name doesn’t offend
I’m not sure how I stumbled on this thing (is it a blog??)
I was just looking to share some thoughts- be they agreeable or not – and I guess unfortunately (for you guys as you don’t seem to like my honest thoughts from the heart) I simply came upon this group
I honestly did not mean to offend and was just looking for dialogue
Why would it make sense for the Russians to provide genuine support to an “investigation” that they will undoubtedly expect to be about as honest and above board as Colin Powell’s UN presentation?
Doubtless they will want to make noises about cooperating, but I have no doubt whatsoever they are well aware that the outcome of any investigation subject to British or US government influence will be such as to allow for the kinds of measures against Russia those people want to justify. They’ve seen this kind of stuff before with the Litvinenko nonsense, and all the bollocks that the neocons put out about Iran, Syria, and other target countries.
Anything they provide will merely be used against them if there’s any way that can be done, and ignored otherwise. They know it’s a rigged game just as we (or those of us who are paying attention) know it’s a rigged game.
If there’s one thing the history of the past 18 years should have taught you beyond any doubt, it’s that there are some among us who absolutely desire conflict, and many of them have considerable power within our own government, and that of the US, to manipulate media, politics and events to achieve that end.
@Randal
Appreciate the cool rational response
10pts for getting the name and origination 🙂
I tried to set a baseline normal view in my first note – I don’t buy headlines or news led government lines
But – I do not trust Russia (nor do I trust China or any autocratic country)
I know democracies like the UK or US are not perfect (lived in both) but at least we get a chance to change it
I only note the above to share my baseline view
Hopefully the truth about Salisbury will come to light – probably not though right?
If it’s not Russian FSB then hopefully we’ll find out
If it is all of our worlds change and not in a positive way
If it’s a US and/or UK conspiracy to blame Russia then holy shit – how fucked is that
Hope no ones too offended
Most Brummies are OK
Dialogue is certainly available here. Though it’s probably not the best place if you are easily offended, by politically incorrect opinions or by robust language.
As for “us guys not liking your honest thoughts”, well speaking for myself I am mostly a counterpuncher – if you approach me with the kind of hostility you did in your initial post to me (101) then I’ll happily respond in kind. I’m not offended by it, just quite happy to engage in robust dialogue when it seems appropriate. Your initial post to “Aslangeo” was pretty confrontational, though.
No worries. We’re not sensitive here and being aggressive is part of the dialogue, but as Randal noted, it doesn’t make much sense for the full narrative of “Putin orders a rather clumsy attack in the UK right before his election.” Add that to the deadline and it all feels weirdly aggressive and hardly the actions of reasonable people; one could certainly suspect foul play from Russia and one could even insist on cooperation to try to find out what’s happening but instead what it feels like is full-on Russophobia and threats.
None of it feels like its in good faith.
I should add that most of us here are rightists in some form or another, so you might find a lot of dialogue on that too 😉
If I seemed offended I wasn’t
However I am by nature aggressive/confrontational so apologise if they came across too strongly
Just to change topic…
Breaking news is Stephen Hawking has just passed away – he leaves quite a legacy
Only within tightly limited parameters, unless we are very wealthy (see the link in the comment I linked for you above about the study that was reported as claiming the US is an oligarchy.
Try setting up an openly racist party here (or one that has the same basic view on sexual behaviour as the vast majority of our grandparents’ generation had) and see how long it is before you are arrested, harassed by thugs with the tacit approval of the police, denied access to a bank account, and generally excluded from ordinary political dialogue.
If I had to guess (and that’s all it would be for anybody honest) I’d say it’s most likely some third party criminal action, or possibly some shadowy US- or UK-elite or Russian exile action, now being exploited by those in the UK government and media who see it as a useful opportunity. The perpetrator of the crime is unknown. That there is clearly a conspiracy to blame Russia can hardly be honestly denied. The media and the government didn’t even bother to wait for any investigation.
Nothing against Brummies. But your politics would seem to be the opposite of mine, so I don’t expect we would agree about much.
‘sole’
LOL learn to speak your own language britbong.
Ha ha
You got me
Oh well
Hope it made your day
The exchanges were fun
Cheers
Yeah, sure…you’re a “life long Socialist” – who just happens to turn stridently anti-Russian right at the moment when the neoliberal, neoimperialist, warmongering UK regime requires it, any facts be damned. I bet your “socialism” consists of being a card-carrying member of the UK Regime Hired Internet Trolls’ and Propagandists’ Trade Union (!)
IDIOT. The UK regime are wasting money on you idiots, which they should be using instead on preventing the mass-rapes of working-class UK girls by Pakistanis. But I guess you don’t even consider that to be a “problem”, eh?
He’s probably a UK regime troll himself. Their job is to scour Internet sites and blogs, trying to insult, intimidate, argue with and drown out individuals honestly stating their facts-and-logic-based opinions.
@Parbes
I am none of the things you suggest
This was in all honesty the first time I have engaged in this type of communication
I merely tried to provide an honest reaction and opinion to the narrative
If it offended or in some way seemed intent on creating hostility then that was not the intent
You can believe that or not – it really doesn’t matter
If sincere opinion offends then that is your issue
Yeah, sure, man, whatever you say. I’m sure you’re very reliable and honest (!)
false flag, aka ritualistic human sacrifice.
I’m starting to like Aztecs. At least they did their in the open and for a good cause (appease gods.)
LPT: never be the washed-up guy who’s more useful for the propaganda value of his death/illness than alive.
corollary: never be a member of the public even remotely useful for the propaganda value of his violent death/arrest at the hands of a govt the West would like to isolate. you’re gonna be sacrificed like the sun is gonna rise tomorrow.
Randal,
Why are you and others wasting your time replying to what, if not a troll, is a mere provocateur?
Mariya Putina moved back to Russia years ago. Apparently so did Lavrov’s daughter. I don’t think in such a situation Sechin’s yacht will matter. Obviously it will be a desperate decision made during a 15 minute meeting by the president and a few important government ministers and generals. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lavrov wasn’t among the decision-makers in such a situation. He’s a foreign minister, not a military expert, and it would already be a military council in a state of war. The American elite’s children will almost surely survive in nuclear shelters, and contrary to what most people believe, it will be possible to leave the shelters after some time and move to less contaminated areas.
To my knowledge in recent years (the elite Moscow school is but one recent example) there’s been a constant movement back to Russia of the children of the Russian political elite. I guess they might fear blackmail or harassment in Western countries.
If you think a nuclear war is truly impossible, then it’s possible that the leadership of one (or all) nuclear powers believes so, too. This means that, as a corollary (and as you write, too), the chances of a shooting war between nuclear powers gets higher.
My point is this: once there is a shooting war, truly anything will be possible. Decisions will have to be made rapidly. For example once it becomes clear that the Russian force in Syria is wiped out, and for example the anti-ship missiles are worthless against superior American technology (for all we know, it’s possible), they will either have to retaliate out of theater, or retaliate using tactical nuke strikes.
Perhaps, as you point out, there will be opportunities to de-escalate after that point, but one never knows. Do you think the Americans gloating after such a military success will de-escalate before the Russian retaliation? How? If they were reckless enough to attack in the first place? Let me point out that a tactical nuke is, technically, already a nuclear war. And that once tactical nukes are used, all bets will be off, panic will set in in capitals.
The other possibility is an American defeat, or semi-defeat, like Martyanov’s Wunderwaffen destroying a couple American carriers and a few US bases in the Middle East, with or without the Russian contingent being wiped out. How will the US elite react to that? How will the US public react? Hysteria might be an understatement to describe what could follow.
Maybe they’ll de-escalate before a full nuclear exchange. (Very likely, but far from absolute certainty.) There’s a small chance they won’t. Maybe it will be impossible to de-escalate at that point. I think once there’s a war, all bets will be off. We just can’t imagine what will happen.
How long does it take to change it? Two hours? With modern technology, I guess you don’t need as high levels of readiness as during the Cold War. It might be faster to put them on high alert.
This is beyond frustrating, especially knowing that you can’t convince people otherwise if they don’t want to be convinced.
Your points about the sexuality and family values are true. Leftist revolutionaries usually offer sexual promiscuity, while rightists promise happy family life, with the Nazis being somewhat in between (or a little bit of both), and the Soviets under Stalin quickly moving to the conservative family values thingy. (Glossy had a point here.) But Nineteen Eighty-Four is a caricature, not an accurate description of a real or viable political system. Another error is that the technologies depicted are not well thought out, like there is the speakwrite (which in 2018 does exist, but only as part of ubiquitous high-tech systems like smartphones), but apparently in a lot of respect it’s stuck in the 1940s. But again, it’s basically a science fiction, and one which doesn’t concern itself much with technology.
Regarding the belief of the leaders, O’Brian at first appears to be a leader of the resistance, then later becomes a cynical secret policeman, but eventually we find out that he believes in the superiority of Ingsoc like a madman. It’s a bit similar to how liberal leaders (or even ordinary SJWs) fervently believe in anti-racism, but then somehow are cynical enough to avoid diversity in their private life. O’Brian is an example of doublethink in the novel.
Anyway, I don’t like it as much as before, but I think Orwell could grasp a number of aspects of ideological thinking (which, unfortunately, is part of all of us, but is especially typical of totalitarian ideologies, including the liberal soft totalitarianism).
Well, it describes something, you can lump them together from certain aspects, but there were profound differences. So you can use the expression, but be aware of its limitations.
Cheers. Sounds too complicated, will have to decide if I have the time, money and energy to visit Kolomna on its own.
The law is take out terrorists, not anyone you feel like.
And I think only dangerous and active terrorists, not retired terrorists.
Amongst the third parties, I would definitely include MOSSAD. Also, I don’t always agree with The Saker, but his description of May as AngloZionist is very apt. The hysterical reaction and the ultimatum to Russia both seem attempts to distract attention from the real culprits.
I don’t see the Americans de-escalating, or permitting the Russians to do so. The Americans seem to have zero comprehension of the risks they’re running. The U.S. is not a rational actor.
Brave New World seems to me to be far more prescient and far more plausible than 1984. But it’s never been as popular, perhaps because Huxley was no fan of either the United States or capitalism.
I think both were prescient in some sense. But Nineteen Eighty-Four is more popular due to all the dictatorship porn (and I admit probably I liked it more as well because of this).
That was my impression as well. I don’t watch many YouTube videos, but I’d suggest watching the video I linked in comment #19. I think it’s obvious from that video that Senator Wicker didn’t understand the risk of nuclear war at all. The same thing could be said of Hillary during the campaign, of John McCain, and many of the usual suspects.
The only thing preventing a nuclear war with Russia currently is that there are still some people at the very top afraid of a nuclear war.
Well … three religions.
With Islam being the third?
Got it in one.
This is the retaliation. Nothing serious, so far.
I imagine that the strategic nuclear forces will be back on high alert within minutes of any significant direct exchange of fire. My point is we aren’t there now whereas we were in my childhood. That’s what I think of as a “high risk” of nuclear war.
I don’t disagree with anything you write there, though I’d put the emphasis slightly differently in some cases.
Most likely there will be lots of opportunities for de-escalation, because it’s unlikely either party intends for a massive response to any attack. You are correct that once you are at war then all bets are off and things could go bad very quickly, but in the Syria situation I think both sides are more likely to proceed with caution (because in the end both know that MAD still applies, and looms over all). So I feel there are grounds to expect that any exchanges will be characterised by punctuated retaliations and escalations, with repeated opportunities to absorb lessons and (hopefully) deescalate.
The US attacked the Syrian government last year and the Russians chose not to respond, partly because imo they were taken by surprise and partly because of the very limited “one off” nature of the strike. If you are pro-Russian you will also believe that their restraint was because they are grown ups, to some extent – I’m not sure their US equivalents could have resisted the hysterical need to retaliate, in similar circumstances. If you are anti-Russian you will say that they didn’t respond because they know the weakness of their position and feared to do so.
This time there will be no surprise – the US regime has pointedly telegraphed its supposed intention to strike the Syrian government. That actually puts more pressure on the Russians to respond, or to appear weak. The Russians in turn have pointedly stated that they will retaliate directly against US forces if the lives of Russian forces in Syria are put at risk.
So if the US launches a wave of missile strikes against various Syrian bases and government targets (the most likely scenario), what does Russia do?
If Russia sits tight and seeks to ride it out again, it massively loses credibility. But maybe that’s better than starting a war. That’s probably what most US regime advocates of such strikes are counting on. And then what happens when the US attacks again? And again?
If Russia responds “asymmetrically” as some strategists have argued they can, where can it do so effectively that doesn’t ultimately make its own situation worse and play into the hands of those seeking a general confrontation of Russia?
If Russia responds militarily, it would really have to be with a limited, targeted response, because anything else would be insane – starting a general war out of fear of a general war. So it could in theory attack a US base or ship from which missiles were launched. Or less seriously it could try just targeting some US planes operating over Syria. If it does so, then there will be another moment of opportunity for de-escalation while the US and the world digests the results of that response.
And so on.
Just making conversation (online style).
I think it’s rather jumping to conclusions to portray the guy as a troll or provocateur merely for expressing opinions that in reality are held by the vast majority of ordinary people in the UK, at least.
The britbong regime’s response is so far unimpressive:
https://rusemb.org.uk/fnapr/6419
Not even an RT ban 🙁
I enjoyed Corbyn’s response, bravo, very statesman like.
What did he say?
There’s an asset freeze.
Questioned the claims, asked if they have given the agent to the Russians to test, asked for the OPCW to be involved and urged dialogue with Russia.
Questioned the claims, asked if they have given the agent to the Russians to test, asked for the OPCW to be involved and urged dialogue with Russia.
That part was very good, and courageous. At the end, though, he felt obliged to perform the necessary Russian-bashing, and even asked what measures had been taken to verify the nature of the suspicious deaths of Skripal’s son and brother (& perhaps even his wife, I’m not sure).
Which is pretty much what happened in 1914. France and Germany in particular both feared war, which is why they were anxious to go to war.
Interesting article.
For example:
But that wasn’t an argument that Corbyn chose to make. Instead, he sought refuge in the idea of international consensus, the terms of the Convention on Chemical Weapons and the rules of fair process.
Which made it easy for Theresa May to turn his words against him. There was a consensus in Britain and among its allies, she pointed out: it just didn’t include him.
The British elites and allies just believe what the government says. But that’s “consensus” and I guess evidence that it must be true: so many important people think so.
The formatting is wrong. Let me send it again:
But that wasn’t an argument that Corbyn chose to make. Instead, he sought refuge in the idea of international consensus, the terms of the Convention on Chemical Weapons and the rules of fair process.
Which made it easy for Theresa May to turn his words against him. There was a consensus in Britain and among its allies, she pointed out: it just didn’t include him.
The British elites and allies just believe what the government says. But that’s “consensus” and I guess evidence that it must be true: so many important people think so.
Interesting article.
Yes, in general though the press has been extremely hostile to his intervention. What’s interesting is that there is no reporting whatsoever of his “Russia bashing” that I noted in my earlier email– this was brought home to me when I unsuccessfully tried to find out whether or not he included Skripal’s wife in the recent “suspicious” deaths he enumerated.
This is not about whether you are ‘honest’ or a ‘troll’. Those are meaningless labels in the context here because they cannot be determined.
It is about your lack of critical thinking.
If you don’t think critically, you are like that proverbial donkey carrying books. Critical thinking requires skepticism. If you take anything from this discussion – and are what you say you are – always remember that people lie. Governments lie, the job of intelligence agencies is to lie, media of course lies. Victims lie, suspects also lie. Decades later they publish memoirs congratulating themselves how clever they were at lying.
It is possible that the nerve gas came from the British facility right there in Salisbury, by mistake, as part of a drill, or to lobby for higher budgets for ‘chemical war prevention’. More crazy things had happened in the past. But we really don’t know.
The difference between then and now being of course the existence of nuclear weapons, which changes the dynamics of such decisions dramatically. Hence the resulting “nuclear peace”, which has held (just about) since the mid-C20th.
England is a cucked anti white cesspit, having a nuclear attack wiping out London would be less destructive than the virulently anti white nomenklatura than currently runs things.
Mossad could be a suspect (ie it’s plausible that they could have motive and means, and certainly the brutality). I’m not particularly convinced of the motivation, though. It’s a bit remote from their presumed immediate concerns.
So the Western MSM as a whole fully believes that Putler did it? Of course they do, why am I even asking. And their narrative even before was that Putin kills his critics, so to them this somehow makes perfect sense. Fucking depressing.
I guess it’s going to take a while for the worst hysteria to die down. Can Russia do anything? Prove its innocence? No? Which is a ridiculous concept to begin with. This incident came out of nowhere (kind of…), it just doesn’t stop. Every time you think it can’t get worse, something like this happens lol. So what’s next? Syria?
And why am I even asking? Because I’ve tried to stay far away from the MSM recently, need to take care of my mental health, had enough of that nonsense during 2014-15… Yeah, I’m weird.
WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki condemned on Wednesday an attempt to murder in Britain of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and demanded Russia, Poland’s former master, to address the UK’s questions regarding the case.
“We condemn this unprecedented attack on the territory of the United Kingdom. This use of chemicals as weapons is clearly violating international law … ,” Morawiecki said in a statement.
“At the same time we call on Russia to address the UK’s questions and appropriately cooperate with the OPCW in this regard.”
Poland expressed its readiness to support Britain, its close ally, in conduct of the investigation.
Poland’s relations with Russia are strained, as Warsaw is afraid of Moscow’s renewed assertiveness. Russia has deployed advanced nuclear-capable Iskander missiles to its Kaliningrad exclave, which borders Poland.
Israelis don’t turn the other cheek, the F16 downing is a big deal. As Craig Murray noted Russia has severely undermined the Israeli position in the Mid East, they can’t do anything themselves as they are too weak, they can try and get others to do it. Pro Israeli trolls, MPs and media outlets have been remarkably vocal on this. Thye have to be right up there on the suspect list.
The depiction of sexuality was a metaphor, nothing more.
Sex is a natural and fundamentally human activity, for without it, there would be no humans of whom to speak, never mind human societies. (Though this could change with the advent of future technologies – that’s a separate topic)
The point in 1984 is that if sex can be politicized, what can’t be? Answer: Nothing.
We see this in the modern West where people self-divide into parties, ideologies, tribes, races, religions – and then these various groups stake out seemingly unrelated positions regarding everything and maybe nothing.
Take the issue of gun ownership. It’s so wrapped up in politics, history and ideology that people can’t even see guns for what they are – they’re tools, inanimate objects, end of story.
Guns don’t cause inequality, nor do they usefully defend against tyranny – they’re tools, that’s all. Guns are not related to class, race, political affiliation, sexual orientation – except if we say they are.
That’s just one example of a non-political issue being politicized.
At the political-economic level, Nineteen Eighty Four was predictive, and the fascinating thing to me, the thing which rang most true, was the idea that Power Has NO Ideology.
Whether “English Socialism”, “Neo-Bolshevism” or the poorly translated “Death Worship”, ideology was just the BS veneer to convince the sheep that they and their society was somehow different from that of their “enemies”.
Scratch the surfaces of all the ideologies, and they were all about one thing – dictatorial power. Orwell was taking a cue from recent history (the 1940s). In that era, Nazis sincerely believed they were building a different society from that of the Communists’, and vice versa. Inconceivable today, but such thinking was prevalent then.
OTOH, Brave New World was more prescient at the social level, especially the “drugging” (literally) of the masses to keep them compliant and oblivious to reality (iirc, the drug was called Soma). Our modern mass entertainment and mindless media are drug-like, plus there is an actual, rapidly intensifying Opioid Epidemic across America – I think afflicting primarily European-Americans.
The Nazi society really was different from the communist one. It was significantly better (for Germans) and significantly worse (for everyone else).
From Mercouris: http://theduran.com/skripal-crisis-theresa-may-fires-blank/
Theresa May produced a package of ‘sanctions’ today which do no more than expose the weakness of Britain’s hand
Note that none of these sanctions include any of the supposedly draconian steps which have been spoken about over the last few days
Reports in the media have also confirmed that the idea of launching a cyber attack against Russia has been ruled out, since the British quietly acknowledge that Russia has immeasurably greater cyber resources with which to retaliate than Britain does
It is interesting to see how the British media has suddenly discovers free speech also applies to Russian media when its own interests are threatened
In truth the British were reckless and foolish to enter into a confrontation on the flimsiest of evidence against Russia, a country far more powerful than themselves
Another apparent blockbuster from Craig Murray (today):
The Novichok Story Is Indeed Another Iraqi WMD Scam
Here is his summary, but I strongly recommend that you read the whole article, which cites the actual documents supporting his case.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/03/the-novichok-story-is-indeed-another-iraqi-wmd-scam/
Definitely on the list.
The suggested motive is certainly justifiable, as helping to manufacture popular consent for a US sphere confrontation of Russia over Syria, pursuant to their longstanding goal of handing that country over to Al Qaeda in order to isolate Hezbollah.
Excellent work by Murray.
Pretty damning.
Tends to point the finger at the US/UK security forces and their shadowy associates.
Murray’s piece makes me suspect he’s had some very high level assistance from insiders well aware that an outrageous hoax is being perpetrated by the UK government and wanting to get the information out.
It’s interesting to consider the contents of the Wikipedia article on “Novichok”:
I wonder how accurate these reported confirmations are. I also wonder who arranged for them to be in the Wikipedia article.
Having attended boarding school in England, I can confirm that students generally prefer to play more rugby than football. A good number of the English rugby team (perhaps half) are privately educated and others are from prestigious public state schools who play rugby as part of their aspiration to be seen as pseudo-private schools (like Whitgift school in south London.
However, this also depends on the region and the school to some extent (charterhouse notably plays more football than rugby during the winter term). Football, following it and being good at it is also a bit ‘cool’ as there is a tendency for wealthy, privileged public school boys to incorporate a few ‘working class’ aesthetics and tastes into their milieu. Hence the heavy usage of the word ‘mate’ amongst them and plenty of tracksuit bottoms being worn.
By the way, Hungary are not that bad – there is a solid generation coming through and I immensely enjoyed watching them give Portugal a good run in that euro 2016 match. However, there is no doubt that with a good combination of Slav/Germanic genetics and a solid population, Hungary should be ranked 30 places higher in the world than she currently is.
Ah, I see there is another man on this thread who knows his stuff. I played Charterhouse at football, incidentally – lost about 6-0
“This is not about whether you are ‘honest’ or a ‘troll’. Those are meaningless labels….”
NO – on the contrary, there is a CRUCIAL difference between an honest opiner spouting falsehoods and nonsense; and a troll spouting falsehoods and nonsense. One is honest but misguided; the other is deliberate and in service of an agenda (and in many cases actually employed for that purpose). Although you’re correct in stating that it is not always easy to distinguish between the two on a forum such as this.
“It is about your lack of critical thinking.”
Bingo; but the “lack of critical thinking” in a specific situation is genuine and unintentional in an honest opiner’s case (i.e, due to ignorance, delusion, dumbness, naivete, lack of relevant experience, etc.). In the case of the troll, however, it is mendacious and INTENTIONAL – that is, the troll does not really “lack” the critical thinking skill or background knowledge necessary to assess a certain situation truthfully, but rather spews lies and propaganda on purpose. This perfectly describes the Anglo-Zionist trolls on this and similar sites.
Nonsense. Nazis did not believe in building any new society or transforming humans into New Nazi Men. Property rights and property relations were unchanged and legal system was maintained unchanged, traditional culture was not rejected, interpretation of history was not transformed. Chances of ending up in prison were 4 time lower than for Americans in 21 century. You could get a fair trial. Even Jews could appeal some anti-Jewish actions and win in courts. Very low unemployment and wages were decent. The only thing that could raise ones brows was the Jewish issue. If Nazis did not touch Jews there would be no reason to generate any level of outrage against them anywhere. But it was the war that changed everything. Till 1939 life for Jews was inconvenient but still much better than that of Blacks in the US and life for ethnic Germans was probably better than lives of Whites in the US.
This kind of posturing by one’s own government is obnoxious as much when it falls flat as when it succeeds. In the latter case, it’s foolish, irresponsible and arguably evil. In the former, it is so embarrassingly incompetent.
There are signs this case could go the former way after all, with a lukewarm international response to May’s initial bombast followed by somewhat of a climb down, and some indications in the alternative media of a potential serious narrative collapse.
I saw someone suggest the amusing possibility of Russia demanding samples (as they are entitled, I understand, under the chemical weapons treaty), and when Britain is unable to respond or responds with obvious fakes, announcing sanctions on the UK, perhaps including revocations of visas to Russia at World Cup time).
Since their evidentiary standard these days is ‘we say so’, this does allow them to seize most any Russian state assets in Britain, but we’ll see what they actually do.
Since Britain is essentially a pirate haven, bombarding it like Port Royal would be more appropriate.
Maybe this is completely off subject; but why has there been little to no follow-up on the recent “crash” while landing in Syria of a Russian military transport plane carrying, what I’ve heard, was a large number of experienced Russian military pilots and a high ranking general?
I find it odd that this incident has disappeared off the radar so quickly. Am I the only one that sees this as strange.
There is another possibility here.
Whoever killed those people doesn’t matter. Nobody is likely to change his/her initial opinion. The “pro-West” crowd will believe Russia did it, “pro-Russia” crowd will believe it did not.
So, if they somehow made Kremlin (or close to Kremlin) unhappy, why not? What’s to lose?
There is something to gain, though: some people will get the message.
I, personally, believe it was somebody from Russian side, or at least it was initiated from that side. Intelligence business is……complicated…….especially when this type of stuff is involved.
That it is being used in full by the certain power circles in West, of course.
But, fundamentally, nothing changes.
The general feeling is that low level players in the confrontation are getting more expendable than usual. Wagner incident for example. Now this. Something will happen soon on a similar/same level. The game just got a notch more brutal.
As long as it doesn’t get nuclear, well, that’s the world we live in.
And, really, nobody cares.
They shuttle into Moscow from time to time. But the main life, and the main purchases, and conspicuous consumption is done in the West. And it’s not to blame them either, they have anonymity overseas, and they nobody is knowing what they are buying.
They can buy whatever property they want, and nobody will know. Whereas if they did this kind of conspicuous consumption at home it would be published in the next Navalny video.
Putin family (his daughters) buy up mansions around the world. For years, nobody knew, but sometimes a purchase is discovered, and they end up with people protesting outside a Putin mansion in France.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGaYCCl_CH0
This does not make sense. We only reach the situation you describe (““pro-West” crowd will believe Russia did it, “pro-Russia” crowd will believe it did not”) if he was attacked in the first place.
“Why not” is because the costs to Russia in business, diplomatic and soft power terms are potentially significant, whereas there are no apparently plausible gains evident.
Can you give a single other example of an exchanged former spy (ie someone they had previously unmasked, tried, convicted and imprisoned) being murdered by the Russians? Does it really strike you that spies would lightly enact a policy of gratuitously murdering exchanged former spies?
Does the idea that such a policy is conceivable (let alone enacted) comport for you with the evident fact that this man, like other exchanged former spies, lived openly in Britain with his location public knowledge and no significant security?
If so, I think you are stretching things to suit your own anti-Russian bias.
I think if anyone did anything here, the Russians would be among the last on the list.
Until a more plausible suggestion is in the public domain, I’m happy to take the Spiegel investigation as the most likely description of the “Wagner event” – a Syrian light probe using mostly militia and irregulars launched in the vicinity, and the Russian mercs just collateral damage. Not a Russian government operation, not intended or planned by anyone in the US or Russian government, and not particularly significant.
The Truth About the Russian Deaths in Syria
The incident is already mostly forgotten except by those directly involved.
There are several complicating factors, some of which we probably don’t even think of.
One thing is that no one has any idea if Russian weapons are any good against the Americans. For example the S-400 gets a lot of hype, but I don’t think it can easily down an American plane, especially if the planes are using overwhelming numbers and are very careful not to get shot down. Moreover, the Americans can easily afford losing a few planes, while the Russian contingent cannot really afford to be wiped out. So I think simply trying to shoot down American warplanes is not going to be enough, because eventually it won’t deter the Americans and it will feel as a weak response, both politically and psychologically. In other words, a further loss of Russian credibility and its ability to defend its allies (if it will have any allies left after that).
So if they want to avoid it, eventually it will have to come to Martyanov’s standoff Wunderwaffen. They will need to attack and seriously damage at least one (and preferably more) of the bases from which the attack was launched.
The attack needs to aim at many targets, because they cannot know if any of them will be successful, thereby raising the chances of a success. Also, the initial attack has higher chances then any later attack, because for example Russian vessels can move closer to American vessels in peacetime. After the American attack on the Syrian contingent, they can use the element of surprise against the Americans. But only once. Again, this argues for concentrating a lot of resources into the initial escalation. The later escalation steps will be more difficult to make.
But this (attack on many American bases and vessels, including carriers, in theater) could be too successful, destroying too many American vessels. This in turn could put pressure on the Americans to regain credibility and prestige by escalating further…
But what happens if the Russians try to destroy, for example, an aircraft carrier, but the carrier’s defenses take down the missiles? What if they try to destroy or damage many targets, but all targets’ defenses brush off the attacks? Now they will have both a diminished credibility and a very angry American leadership. Which, seeing how ineffectual Russian weapons are, will only get emboldened. So there might be a case for a tactical nuclear strike. Or, emboldened by their success, there might be a further American escalation, either immediately, or after a few months…
Again, the more I think of the situation, the more likely a full escalation seems. It’s a typical dollar auction.
Your argument boils down to what they already thought before the Great War: that because all economies are interconnected, the ruling dynasties are related to each other, and they all spend their vacations in the same resorts, so there can be no war.
I don’t think it has more validity now than it had then.
Depends.
Works both ways.
Somebody did kill two persons, on a bench, in a park, in UK.
Looks……..non-criminal.
Who?
Two sides, most likely. Even fifteen if we want to. Still, two or fifteen, feels as a “state job”.
So, by the same token
Bottom line is, a state player did this.
I feel it was of Russian origin. And, if we want to go into technical details, yes, it could’ve been any of those who would do such work for Russians, for any reason imaginable.
So, again, double murder, non-criminal. Apparently poison. M.O. already seen before in related matters.
A state then.
Which one more likely?
Absolutely. War is the realm of complexity and unintended and unforeseen consequences.
The reality is that nobody really knows how these systems will interact and work in a full on modern war situation, because it’s never happened. Modelling and theory can only take you so far.
That said, my impression is that both the Russians and the Yanks are pretty confident the S400 is an effective system. If it’s not actively suppressed (an attempt to do so by the usual means – SEAD swamping attacks – would be a massive operation and would itself amount to an open declaration of war on Russia) and US planes are operating over Syria then I think it’s reasonable to expect targets to present themselves. It’s not just S400 as well, there’s a whole suite of integrated systems available.
The logical first response for Russia to significant attacks on Syrian government targets would seem to me to be either do nothing and swallow it or light up the skies and start attacking US aircraft until the attacks are over. Then see how the Yanks react.
Provided they get at least one plane I don’t think it will be seen as weak – the Yanks aren’t used to taking casualties when they are bullying target states, and don’t respond well to them. For that very reason, of course, there’s then a risk that the US will feel forced to respond (being Americans of course they will portray it as an “unprovoked attack” coming “out of the blue” by the evil Russkis). But it will be another opportunity for a halt to escalation.
Then if the Yanks choose a limited strike on Russian air defences or forces, the Russians will have the option to target a US ship or base in response. No need for “Wunderwaffen” – a simple torpedo or large missile salvo will do the job.
Of course either party could decide to forgo incremental escalation and jump straight to a major onslaught, but though the possibility can never be entirely dismissed my feeling is neither would want to do that in this case. The risks are too high and the stakes not really high enough.
They’re not dead, as far as I’m aware.
There seems to have been some sort of poisoning attack which affected the two people supposedly targeted, and supposedly a police officer who responded. Beyond that, the only “information” we have comes from the exact same kind of well established liars that lied us into the Iraq war and the Libya war.
Believing them now over something so conveniently suited to their foreign policy interests would seem to fall immediately foul of George Bush II’s famous words of wisdom:
“fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again”
We just don’t “know” what you are claiming we “know”.
On what basis do you make this assumption?
And even if it was a state player, the first suspects (based upon cui bono, means and opportunity) would have to be the US, since they apparently decommissioned the Uzbek factory where the original stuff was supposedly made, and the US advocates of confrontation of Russia have a much clearer motive for doing such an attack than Russia. Next would be Britain with an equally clear motive and the facilities of Porton Down right next door. Then there’s Israel, also with an obvious motive.
But we don’t even know what the substance was, ffs,unless we accept the unsupported word of the established liars in the British regime!
But the problem is that in the past couple of years many in the U.S. have started behaving as if nuclear weapons don’t change anything. They seem to think that a war with Russia would be like the Spanish-American War – that their troops will go bravely charging up San Juan Hill, that resistance will be minimal, that it will be all glory with no price to pay.
They either refuse to believe that a shooting war could escalate into a nuclear war, or they’re convinced that somehow they can fight a nuclear war without taking any casualties, or they accept that they might lose a few million civilian casualties but they just don’t care.
We’re seeing a degree of recklessness in U.S. foreign policy that surpasses anything seen during the Cold War.
I agree, up to a point. Anyone who has had anything to do with deterrence theory knows that once a war has started it can escalate to a full nuclear exchange even without either side intending it to do so. That’s why nuclear deterrence deters open conventional wars as well as nuclear exchanges – they are just too risky.
Taking such a risk over something as petty as their butt-hurt condition over failing to regime change Syria is beyond irresponsible.
Or what happens if Russian weapons prove more successful than expected and the Americans lose a couple of carriers? Suddenly their fleet is obsolete junk metal. The Americans would immediately escalate, massively.
Your scenario is perhaps more likely. Either way escalation is not a possibility but an inevitability. And it will go nuclear.
That’s why during the Cold War both sides were incredibly careful not to be seen to be directly shooting at each other. They were grown-ups and they understood the consequences.
On the type of target (spy game).
On the M.O. involved (chemicals).
Criminals, for any reason imaginable? No.
Personal stuff? Less likely than the basic assumption.
Could be.
I still go 70/3o for Russians.
So, back to the basics:
Substance, not a firearm, edged or blunt weapon. Not even common street bashing to death.
Or more subtle, an accident. Or a “suicide”.
Hence….the rest.
I think we are missing a tiny little element here.
The method.
Substance, two persons at the same time, in public. The “good” scenario, food/drinks poisoning. Less likely.
So, some substance, dynamically applied, to two persons at the same time, in public, in UK.
Whoever did this, not good.
Mirzayanov, speaking at his home in Princeton, New Jersey, said he is convinced Russia carried it out as a way of intimidating opponents of President Vladimir Putin.
“Only the Russians” developed this class of nerve agents, said the chemist. “They kept it and are still keeping it in secrecy.”
The only other possibility, he said, would be that someone used the formulas in his book to make such a weapon.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russians-says-chemist-uncovered-existence-novichok-075342077.html
Here are 2 photos of Skripal’s daughter Yulia:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/03/13/22/4A29FEDC00000578-5495379-image-m-4_1520979963575.jpg
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/D638/production/_100304845_skripals.jpg
Does anyone else notice anything strange? If so, any explanation?
I also mentioned that possibility! Because the capabilities of both weapons systems vis-à-vis the other are unknown, it’s very difficult for the Russians to calibrate a proportionate, but successful, yet not too costly (on either side – using up half their anti-ship missiles to destroy just one US carrier perhaps wouldn’t do it!) response.
The chemical weapons at Eastern Ghouta and Khan Shaykun must have been used by Germany, which has developed this deadly chemical. The only other possibility is that some other country has copied the formula from the German recipes!
Yes, it’s highly irresponsible. Yet essentially that’s what they are threatening with.
I cannot see anything strange, but I’m not usually good at such games. In the first picture she looks fatter, is wearing glasses, and has her hair dyed blond. The second picture still looks slightly older, but lighting conditions are so different it could easily be the other way around.
Well, I included those anti-ship missiles among the “Wunderwaffen.” What if the Americans have a reliable defense against them? I recently communicated to a knowledgable Hungarian guy (he is one of the authors of this long summary of current military technologies), and he was strongly of the opinion that the Kinzhal would, for example, be totally useless against US vessels (but probably not against lesser countries, including NATO allies). I don’t know if that guy is correct (he seems to base his opinions on relevant NATO brochures and the likes), but it could easily happen to be true. Or not. Is there a way the Russians could know that? Of course not. But I guess the Americans do believe it.
So, suppose you have, say, 10 vessels in the Mediterranean, up against, say, 50 US vessels. (I’m making up the numbers, I have no idea.) Your vessels can sail relatively close to US vessels in peacetime. This makes it more likely that the attack would succeed. But, once you attacked a US vessel, it will no longer be peacetime in the Mediterranean (and maybe not elsewhere), and so a second salvo will have a much lower chance of success. By attacking a US vessel, you will also expose all 10 of your vessels to a US counterattack: they can escalate further by simply sinking all 10 of your vessels.
Now, there is always a risk of the first attack already being unsuccessful. You can raise the chance of a success by attacking multiple targets (maybe some of them make some mistakes in their defensive measures, or there’s a broken equipment in one of their systems, or something). It’s difficult to calibrate to make your first attack (really, a counterattack) on US vessels both successful and not too severe.
Let’s repeat the problems:
1) First naval strike is inherently easier than the second; if you screw up the first strike, it’s difficult to be better the second time
2) There’s an unknown chance of failure even for the first strike; a failure being interpreted by the reckless US leadership as an invitation for further escalation everywhere, since it proves in their eyes that Russia is a weak, dying country.
3) First naval strike invites US retaliation by sinking your vessels: so it’s advisable to sink at least as many vessels as your own (and since your Syrian contingent is about to be wiped out, a bit more) so that even after further US escalation you can still call it even.
4) Sinking many US vessels might make it difficult for the US to counterstrike, or to wipe out your forces in Syria, so it could make it possible for you to evacuate your vessels and perhaps even your Syrian troops; better, to keep Syria as it is
If you fail with your first strike, it becomes very likely that your only choices are either full capitulation or escalation to tactical nukes. Even that latter might get more difficult, because the US might sink the ships from which to launch them… (Okay, you will always have your bombers, but the difficulty might increase.)
So logic would dictate a large scale surprise counterattack on the US forces in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean. Otherwise you will just give further escalation advantage to the US even in case of a success, and you will also risk failure, which would also make the situation worse for you.
But I agree that at first they will simply allow their air defenses to shoot at American aircraft in Syrian airspace.
I was talking about one further step, if the US in response started a massive attack on the Russian contingent there, hoping for a localized conflict.
IMO, in a nutshell, either you believe the very often repeated Russophobic myth that Russia/Putler has murdered masses of “Kremlin critics” over the years. Then it’s of course quite easy to believe that Russia was behind this incident as well.
Or you actually know that it’s statistically nonsense, as Anatoly has showed (sadly, I think even many non-Russophobes are unaware of that) and it doesn’t make any sense overall. (Not to mention the timing, of course.) Putin received less than 70% of the votes in 2012, so while the level of Russian authoritarianism can certainly be debated, the country is obviously not a “dictatorship” of any kind.
Even now, there are probably tens of millions of “Putin critics” in Russia, so killing some random few journalists and “ex-agents” makes as much sense in the real world as Russia brainwashing millions of American and Europeans into voting for Trump and the “far-right”.
Thanks for the information. Porton Down has gone from saying that there was no independent confirmation that Novichoks exist ( 2016 ) to claiming that the substance involved in the Skripal business is Novichok 5, according to Dr Richard North ( see Response 59 ).
At least, I assume Porton Down did the identification of the agent. If they didn’t, who did? The Americans? The Germans ?
The more this affair is examined, the murkier it becomes. And still no evidence has been presented of the involvement of the Russian Government or its agents.
I think you were aiming these comments at peterAUS, whom Randal was refuting, rather than Randal. However, the sentiments I totally agree with. They are the ones that best fit the evidence.
Too many people have been duped by the MSM and take the MSM’s claims at face value. peterAUS seems to be one of them.
Apparently the US and many other countries (I think including Germany and France) have issued statements to the effect that they also share the UK assessment of Russian culpability. It’s far from over.
Here’s a Bloomberg editorial, as an example. It’s certainly a big part of the current propaganda campaign.
Well yes, atleast my point wasn’t to disagree with Randal, indeed pretty much the opposite. Just my addition to that discussion and really my summary about this whole situation.
But it’s absolutely clear to me that every time something like this happens, every time any “Putler critic” dies and it’s somehow possible to create a convenient conspiracy theory around it, that’s how you should view the ensuing hysteria.
This narrative is obviously just not going to end. It has probably never been this strong actually, because now it’s mixed-up with the general post-Ukraine Russophobia and Russiagate. Which is incredibly bizarre due to the fact that Russia (certainly post-Soviet one) has probably never been this stable and safe. The Russian overall homicide and death rates have decreased massively, not to mention the number of journalist killings, but that has not stopped the Western media and establishment. We’re living in a strange time.
They just don’t seem to get it, and I repeat myself once again: Russia has a population of 150 million, tens millions of those not fans of Putin, god knows how many journalists, many more or less pro-Western liberals in influencial positions and free flow of information TO Russia, but they seem to think that The Dark Lord killing some random “freedom fighter” every few years makes any difference, that it makes sense. The problem of course is that very few people are aware of those statistics, including most Russophiles, it seems. But it was really the whole Russiagate thing that showed how unhinged those people are about Russia. Nothing will surprise me anymore, I hope.
Then the question becomes what plans the US has put in place to deal with that contingency, how much leeway the commanders in theatre have been given on them, and what decision is made by the decision maker when the time comes.
There will certainly be plans for the option of a general attack on Russian forces in theatre in response to a Russian attack on a US aircraft, probably beginning with SEAD. My guess is that the Yanks will want authorisation from the very top for that, though. Such an attack means war with Russia. They might well not go through with it.
They will also have plans for limited retaliatory strike options, perhaps on Russian aircraft.
Part of the problem then is of course that what one side thinks of as a limited strike (cruise missiles aimed at Khmeimim, for instance – who knows what the warheads are when they are approaching), could be responded to by the other side as a full declaration of war – the risk of such misjudgements and misunderstandings is why the whole business is so dangerous.
As to your overall argument suggesting a massive early strike, your logic is fine in detail. Step back, though, and you see that it is the Pearl Harbor argument. It ends up with risking everything. Nobody does that lightly – Japan only did it because it was pushed against the wall by the US strategically with no real alternative, as the Japanese militarist elites saw it. Is Russia up against the wall strategically to the same extent? I don’t think so. Nuclear weapons change things – the perceived costs of war are much greater. The Japanese elites thought that in the worst case they would be defeated by the US and come to terms – they didn’t expect the uncivilised and brutish US insistence on unconditional surrender. But the worst case for Russia and the world today is not capable of being ignored or unnoticed – it is global nuclear devastation.
I can’t be certain – nobody can and anyone who claims to be is lying – but I think both sides will proceed cautiously, it will be under political rather than military control, and there will probably be punctuated escalations rather than massive escalation. But the timescales are in minutes and hours these days, not days and weeks as they were in 1914 or in 1941.
At least, I assume Porton Down did the identification of the agent.
They did.
There’s clearly a big propaganda push on. It feels for me like the runup to Iraq in 2003, or to the attempt to attack Syria in 2013.
One has to wonder if the Skripal business is part of the overall US sphere response to the cleanup in Ghouta and the renewed attempt to manipulate the US into direct involvement in Syria. If it is, then I’d say we are in for interesting times and the chances are very high we will see a US attack on Syria within days.
There was a joint statement by the UK,US, France & Germany. Among the highpoints:
New Scientist also “reporting” uncritically, I see.
This would seem to be utterly inconsistent with what other expert sources on Novichok have said, including the major source quoted by New Scientist themselves in the same article, Vil Mirzayanov.
Interesting that New Scientist chose not to query the obvious inconsistency.
I found it interesting that Macron at first decried what he called May’s “fantasy politics” and demanded more evidence. Then, after a phone call from May, he joined in. Did he get any evidence? Why is the evidence impossible to make public?
Trump has also fallen into line:
And Corbyn:
Needless to say, none of these individuals (Trump, May, Corbyn, Merkel) are remotely honest players, and their falling into line is no indication that any real evidence was produced – merely that they have been convinced it is in their interests to go along with the UK regime’s hysteria play for the moment.
Why is the evidence impossible to make public?
The only evidence they claim to have date is the claim that the substance used to poison the Skripals was Novichok, and they have indeed made this claim public. What more do you want?
Uhm….mm…because part of it could’ve come from sources close to Kremlin’s reach?
We are talking “intelligence business” here, mixed with high politics.
The regime in Kremlin could have some people in RF/ex-USSR that provided some parts of the evidence.
Besides…..even in a plain common criminal murder you don’t see public informed about all details of the crime……..
In all this “Russia couldn’t have done it” and “it’s all Western play”, nobody is bothering with this:
It’s publicly known that The Empire has a “kill list” of people who are supposed to get “droned” as soon as their location is known.
They do get “droned” regardless of “collateral damage”.
Why is it inconceivable that Russia could have such list?
They had it in Chechnya, they have it in Syria.
And people can get onto that list for plenty of reasons.
You can’t drone a person in UK, but you can use other methods.
The question “why” those two and why so public?
Why the “message”.
Well…..if there is a serious confrontation coming, why not scare a bit all those Russians who live in West to make them aware where their true loyalties should be?
Those living in UK first.
What do they want from Russia? There’s no point to start a war for its own sake.
Well, then, I also have evidence that Germany was responsible for the East Ghouta and Khan Shaykhun chemical attacks. Sarin was used, a deadly compound developed by Germany.
Why now? Does Putin look like he needs a crisis to help him? It doesn’t seem like it.
Meanwhile on the other side of the pond:
So, it all comes down to secret evidence. A bunch of inveterate liars gave their word of honor that it is so.
LOL! Yes, it’s all very familiar from the runup to the Iraq war. “Obviously they must have evidence, but obviously they can’t give you the evidence because it might compromise sources.”
The eternal gotcha of the establishment warmonger.
In the case of Iraq the “sources” all turned out to be laughably unreliable liars.
Of course, you’ll try this “everyone’s doing it? What’s the big deal?” ploy when you want to argue that the Russians might have done it, but as soon as you’ve won that point it will be back to “it’s an outrageous, monstrous, uniquely evil crime by a uniquely brutal regime, that absolutely must be responded to”.
There won’t be any of this “oh, they all do it, what’s the big deal” smarm then, will there?
That all sounds superficially clever, but in reality it doesn’t scare anyone, does it? Because it’s so absurdly involved and high profile that no-one seriously expects it to start happening to ordinary opponents of Russia even if they were for some reason to believe the inherently ridiculous claim that Moscow would choose someone as inoffensive and irrelevant as Skripal to “make an example” of.
If they really wanted to scare people they would start just killing high profile opponents effectively and by ordinary methods.
Statement by the Press Secretary on the United Kingdom’s Decision to Expel Russian Diplomats
FOREIGN POLICY
Issued on: March 14, 2018
The United States stands in solidarity with its closest ally, the United Kingdom. The United States shares the United Kingdom’s assessment that Russia is responsible for the reckless nerve agent attack on a British citizen and his daughter, and we support the United Kingdom’s decision to expel Russian diplomats as a just response. This latest action by Russia fits into a pattern of behavior in which Russia disregards the international rules-based order, undermines the sovereignty and security of countries worldwide, and attempts to subvert and discredit Western democratic institutions and processes. The United States is working together with our allies and partners to ensure that this kind of abhorrent attack does not happen again.
Q:
A:
Yes.
The catch is, sometimes inveterate liars could be telling the truth.
Or very honest people lying through their teeth.Especially those in high places. Any high place anywhere.
It’s almost as though there is some kind of national guilty conscience at work, when the US regime so loudly accuses others of precisely what it, itself, is regularly guilty of.
“disregards the international rules-based order”
You can’t defy the “international rules-based order” more openly than the US did this week by publicly declaring an intention to launch an illegal unilateral war of aggression against Syria on the entirely illegitimate pretext of a supposed use of chemical weapons (and that’s just in the past week – disregarding the long US track record of openly flouting its own UN Charter commitments by waging illegal unilateral wars of aggression in Yugoslavia and in Iraq, to name but two in the past two decades).
“undermines the sovereignty and security of countries worldwide and attempts to subvert and discredit Western democratic institutions and processes”
This from the home of “democracy promotion” and “color revolutions”, with black budgets bigger than many countries’ entire defence budgets.
I claim that you are a pedophile, I have made this claim public. What more do you want?
Anything is possible. I’m on record here saying that it’s certainly possible that it was the Russians. I just haven’t seen any evidence, and the handling of the case by the UK certainly didn’t inspire much confidence in me.
But it’s definitely possible that this time they are telling the truth.
From the discussion in the Kremlin between Putin and some senior advisers:
“What a clever idea. I know – instead of just killing some of them and making them actually afraid they might themselves realistically be targets, we should do it in a ridiculously and theatrically horrible way that will give the maximum propaganda value to our enemies.
The genius of it is that it’s so stupid that nobody would believe we could do it that way.”
“But hang on – if they don’t believe we did it, how will it scare them?”
“Um….. Never mind all that. It’s so deliciously evil let’s do it that way anyway.”
“OK. Make it so.”
Cut to Putin stroking white cat and chuckling evilly.
I have a vague feeling that you are losing your cool a bit here.
If a Brit gentleman can get into that state here, what to expect from ethnic Russians?
That Bush/Blair lying must’ve left some deep scares somewhere.
Good.
So, if you really wish to go that route, what’s the problem all with this?
Why the regime in Kremlin just can’t say “it was a matter of National Security etc”?
A superpower comfortable with re-establishing its place on the world scale shouldn’t have a problem with that.
Russian allies , current and potential, would be uncomfortable with that admission?
Or encouraged?
Re
Hehe…you sure?
I have some doubts re that statement.
Why don’t you speak with some Russians there who are critical of the Kremlin. Say, talk a lot of shit about Putin in public. Ask them how they feel now.
You didn’t write a single argument why we should uncritically accept the official story here. I don’t deny that it could have been Putin, but of course I can just as easily imagine someone else, like Israel. I don’t know. I have certainly not seen any evidence. Let me repeat my point that the handling of the issue by the UK didn’t raise my confidence in their statements.
Yes, being lied into a war by your own government is one thing, but being lied into a stupid and unsurprisingly disastrous war for the benefit of foreign interests tends to leave a mark.
Especially when you see the same methods used again and again, successfully.
Gosh, Russian exiles who are critical of the Kremlin. I wonder what they’d say if I asked them, in effect, whether they support the latest anti-Kremlin propaganda line?
Nevertheless, it is clearly the case that just killing opponents in the US sphere by traditional methods would have at least as much of a chilling effect (probably more so in practice because it could be much more easily done repeatedly), with a fraction of the benefits to US sphere anti-Russian propaganda.
I can certainly understand why you desperately don’t want to admit that obvious and hugely inconvenient truth.
Things are hotting up:
Florida university bridge collapses ‘leaving people trapped’
Clearly it’s the Russians “sending a message” to Americans that they must fear Moscow.
I have evidence, but I can’t give it to you without compromising the sources, of course. Obviously it was the Russians, because they clearly have the capability to bring down bridges.
But it’s definitely possible that this time they are telling the truth.
Who are they? If the UK, there is certainly some non-zero probability that they are telling the truth, in the sense that the Skripals were poisoned by “Novichok”. But from there to the “Russians did it”, absent other evidence, is not a question of “telling the truth”.
Correct.
I wrote my opinion about who’s the most likely culprit and why.
Opinions and orifices.
And, isn’t the very point of this site about not accepting, uncritically, anything?
Agree.
Haha….you want evidence in this case?
O.K.
Agree.
I’ll repeat my point: it is more likely that the regime in Moscow did it than the UK Government/whoever did it.
More……….likely……….say, 70/30.
France, NATO, the US, Germany etc. Have publicly vented their real feelings then they line up in support because they have to. We, Britain, should have got the message not to push it.
Things are hotting up:
Florida university bridge collapses ‘leaving people trapped’
Clearly it’s the Russians “sending a message” to Americans that they must fear Moscow.
So the prophecy is now being fulfilled (albeit on a different continent):
Works both ways.
Pulling that, by the “executive branch” of the UK Government, now, against in essence, own asset, tell me, how does that look like?
I’ll try:
“You betray your own side and defect to us. Then, when we feel expedient we murder you and close member of your family”.
Really?
There is also some possibility that they have some secret information which would confirm that it really was the Russians.
I just somehow don’t trust them enough to believe them, especially the way they handle the case. E.g. no contact to the OPCW, stonewalling Russian requests, talking about Novichok without telling us how they changed their minds regarding its very existence, saying that the mere fact that it was Novichok proved Russian culpability without explaining the glaring contradiction of it having been developed in Uzbekistan in a factory decommissioned by the US, etc. I feel like I’m being fed unsophisticated propaganda.
Again, they could be telling me largely the truth (regarding the culprit), but they aren’t behaving as if they did.
Only if you want me to believe it. Even in the Litvinenko case a lot of evidence was made public. They also didn’t rush to judgment so quickly.
Here, what evidence they talk about, is not an evidence. (Basically, that it was Novichok.) They are not talking about some secret evidence. I wouldn’t believe that either, but this way they are clearly lying about the process how they came to the conclusion.
By the way, by so quickly telling the Russians that they already know it was them, aren’t they betraying the fact that they have a secret source inside Russia? Shouldn’t they wait a bit not to betray their secret source?
That settles it I guess.
Because I, somehow, don’t see you, me or anyone on this site being invited to “Cobra”, we are where we are.
And….hehe….only “pro-West” side has biases, preconceived opinions and agendas.
“Pro-Russia” doesn’t.
Funny.
Feels almost as discussing with “progs”. The same method I mean.
Just this morning Macron demanded more evidence.
My preconceived opinion is that I don’t know what happened, and I don’t take the word of habitual liars as evidence. But currently even if I accepted everything they say, they themselves never mention any evidence other than that it was Novichok. Which in and of itself is not an evidence at all. So they either lie about how they came to the conclusion, or they are imbeciles incapable of forming logical conclusions.
People thought he was just another immature Blairite empty suit “qualified” by a BSc in Social Science from Bradford University, given to spouting Blairite warmongering nonsense because he’s basically an amoral airhead.
But look at him now.
No, not really. Certainly not in this case.
You do realise that this doesn’t work, even on its own spurious terms?
If the British tried to murder Skripal because it was expedient (clearly a possibility and a more logical one than the idea that Russia did it if only on the basis of cui bono), they did it on the basis that it would be falsely attributed to the Russians.
All things equal, they are less likely to nuclear bomb their own children, all their possessions, all their friends children – than a normal person – say: myself, would be.
If missiles are flying on Moscow, obviously there are automatic procedures to retaliate. But if missiles and bombs will fly, it’s not going to be in any situation accept from direct attack from Western governments.
/pol/ warned us
http://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/163064799/#163071926
https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/974361793320620032
http://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/140918732
Surrender
Williamson is known as Private Pike, and May is deeply unpopular so won’t be picking her successor. Still Conservative MPs are useless and they won’t allow party members a vote.
Airheaded neocon/neocon collaborator as Tory leader – hardly a shock or anything new.
There hasn’t been a Tory leader who didn’t answer to that description since Major, and the only reason he wasn’t a neocon was that he wasn’t bright enough to be evil. Though admittedly the quality trend has been sharply negative nonetheless, and Williamson would probably be the crowning turd on the dungpile in that regard.
What do they want from Russia?
I don’t know your background, kimppis, but, from reading my posts, you may know mine. I am a (well ) over 50 male, educated to post-graduate level, living in the British Isles. I am very depressed by these current events, or rather the British Government and media’s attitude to them. 25, 30. 40 years ago, the Government would have acted with restraint, would have said the matter was
sub iudice and the investigation should be completed.The media would wait until the investigation was completed. The average person was better educated, had more worldly experience and was much more sceptical than now. Also, the MSM had a much wider range of views than the present MSM.
Now, the Western MSMs are oligopolies, their views on Russia are very predictable and conform to those of their governments, surprise surprise. Most depressing of all, so many young people are miseducated semi-literates, whose main interest is pop culture. Many of them will be lapping up this garbage as truth.
https://youtu.be/6atSU2iUrdI
Someone with the skills and software should redo that clip with Putin’s face over the US president’s, Theresa May’s over the dead scientist’s, and Trump’s or Netanyahu’s over the alien’s.
Exactly my feelings. The lockstep, unquestioning rush to judgement and howling down of dissenters by our media and by our politicians is shockingly brazen and unashamed, and it seems particularly pervasive on this occasion, which is one reason I think something is up.
It’s notable that Craig Murray, who is a longstanding UK dissident despite being a shameless lefty, wrote today that: “In 13 years of running my blog I have never been exposed to such a tirade of abuse as I have for refusing to accept without evidence that Russia is the only possible culprit for the Salisbury attack. The abuse has mostly been on twitter, and much of the most venomous stuff has come from corporate and state media “journalists”.”
A link posted in one of the replies to that Murray page went to the following audio blog, which gave a couple of examples of the disgraceful media coverage quite well (I have no idea who the blog is by – probably a dumb lefty on political issues, but he obviously recognises the problem with our media and makes he point quite well):
The Monologue: Leicester Academic Tara McCormack Destroys SKY News Kay Burley In Russia Debate!
Here’s Corbyn’s half-hearted and rather cowardly piece in the Guardian, which is nevertheless head and shoulders above the rest of the British mainstream media and political scene:
The Salisbury attack was appalling. But we must avoid a drift to conflict
It’s better than nothing (mostly because of the abject failure of the rest), but if he were really a courageous leader of a serious opposition, he wouldn’t have conceded half the war from the outset by writing:
There is of course no good reason to rule out a non-Russian source for this incident, or even to accept yet that it was a nerve gas attack at all, since there is as yet no credible public domain evidence to that effect, only the word of government liars.
Amusing to see that a few comments overwhelmingly supportive of Corbyn’s stance as refreshing slipped through and were massively up-voted, before the moderators quickly stepped in to say “comments had been opened by mistake”.
And this illustrates what Corbyn was up against (though there’s no reason to have any sympathy for Labour – they made their own bed by not properly purging the Blairites from their party, who were always only waiting for the next opportunity to stab the party leadership in the back):
Spy row stokes Labour’s foreign policy divisions
And that’s another problem. The Yanks would dearly love to find out just how well their military tech stacks up against Russian military tech. A nice little limited war would let them find out. Of course that nice little limited war could turn out to be WW3.
Wars are very profitable.
They would be better off applying that approach to China.
Basically piecemeal escalation means capitulation, unless Russian weapon systems prove to be highly effective against the Americans.
We are talking about the situation of a reckless American attack on the Syrian Russian forces (which is just one step above what our beloved Nimrata already promised), which means the Americans are certainly playing a game of chicken.
This is my additional argument: in a game of chicken the only way to win is to prove yourself reckless. The more reckless the better.
The American escalation proves that they are reckless, which gives them the upper hand. (Unless Martyanov is right and the Russian weapons prove vastly superior. But it’d be highly irresponsible to bank on that.) The only way to deter them is to show them the Russians are prepared to plunge into a nuclear war. (Again, we’re talking about the situation after a reckless attack on the Russian forces in Syria.)
A capitulation might not save the world from a nuclear war, because of course the Americans would keep going after that. In a few years or a couple decades we could be facing the very same situation, but one in which the Americans were analyzing the lessons of their “bold” (in reality reckless) victory in Syria.
I know the Munich analogy is overused for totally different situations, but the American Empire’s behavior is, even if slower, reminiscent of Hitler’s behavior before the war: it’s reckless, unwilling to be deterred, and the only way to prevent a war is to give it what it wants without a fight. It’s also unwilling to put a boundary on its ambitions. The Americans could probably have Syria if they were willing to recognize, say, the former USSR as Russia’s natural sphere of influence. But they obviously won’t stop at all.
The only reason they don’t attack Syria by military force is because they fear a nuclear war. Not reacting to a conventional attack on Russian forces with maximum force will show them what you guys are arguing for: namely, that the use of nuclear weapons is unthinkable. But if it is, then of course they can attack. And they will attack. They will keep doing so until someone shows them the willingness to use nukes.
And here’s the rub: once you back up, it will be much much more difficult to convince them next time. If you backed down in Syria, perhaps you’ll back down in Crimea, too? In Volgograd as well? It’d really be a Churchillean moment of choosing shame over war, and then not avoiding war later on.
The same argument was used before the First World War. The German Kaiser was first cousins with both the King of England and the Empress of Russia. They had much more to lose from a war than a normal average person. The world was globalized.
Yet they started a war.
I think it’s not the use of nuclear weapons which should be unthinkable, but reckless policies leading to the risk of a nuclear war.
should be
Boris Johnson says it is ‘overwhelmingly likely’ Putin himself ordered nerve agent attack on former Russian spy
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-putin-order-salisbury-nerve-agent-attack-russia-spy-poisoning-sergei-skripal-a8259086.html
Is it also overwhelmingly likely that he was stroking a white cat and chuckling evilly, while doing so? As suggested by Randal.
I’m eagerly awaiting Mr. Johnson’s assessment on the questions of the white cat and evil chuckles.
ZeroHedge made a comprehensive summary of the arguments against the UK government’s case.
Fortunately, the democratic media and press are unquestioning towards the explanations provided by the democratic political elites and intelligence services. I guess that is what the democratic media and press are for: to just tell us what the democratic governments and intelligence services would like us to know. To question the narrative of the democratic intelligence services would be – by definition – undemocratic, antidemocratic. Those who engage in such activities are not democrats. Questioning the democratic intelligence services is the narrative of Putin, who is a dictator. Therefore, this “point of view” cannot be characterized as anything else but pure propaganda.
Having taken this extreme position, it will now be very difficult for the UK to back down. In particular, I don’t see how they can possibly justify going to the World Cup.
I was just going to write my prediction that there would be calls on FIFA to move the World Cup out of Russia. Just to make sure I wasn’t reinventing the wheel I did an online search, and sure enough a move is already afoot in this direction.
Russia row: Labour MP calls for debate on World Cup move
Late this morning:
A consensus of influential New York businessmen maintain that the disappearance of union leader James Hoffa was most likely entirely voluntary. Asked whether they were in fact members of the “mafia”, a spokesman replied “That’s absurd. Our consensus is that there’s no such thing outside of crazy conspiracy theories.”
From Craig Murray today:
There’s more as well
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
Indeed.
Murray has done absolutely sterling work on this.
An interesting update:
If the Chinese do anything other than refuse point blank any dirty dealings with the British regime over this, then the Russians would be justified in regarding it as a serious stab in the back.
That’s great writing by Murray.
I imagine that they will attempt to mothball it in eternal inquiry hell, though that will also be used as evidence to discredit the utility of the OPCW. Pretty much there’s no positive solution there.
It is very carefully worded propaganda. Of a type developed by liars.
I assume you got the pun?
The hope would be that at each point enough damage could be done to give pause to the decision maker on the other side. That doesn’t require any magical wunderwaffen or any remarkable effectiveness, necessarily. It just needs the point to be made that costs will be higher than hoped by the optimists on the other side, shifting the balance of influence amongst the various advisers and in the mind of the decision maker.
I agree that the best use of the Hitler analogy and the related arguments against appeasement (I make no stipulation here that those arguments were necessarily valid in relation to Hitler, but they are so in received establishment opinion) in the modern world is to apply it to the US. The US is the powerful unappeasable aggressor, that will never be satisfied or stop voluntarily and in practice must be confronted at some point. I believe the Russians realised that in the late 1990s/early 2000s and took steps to enact it in Georgia in 2008 and onwards (Russians argue that the realisation and preparatory steps came long before that, and perhaps they are right, but 2008 was when it became clear to the global public, those who were watching.) But the fact is that confronting the US is dangerous and a tricky task. If not quite the Saker’s “monkey playing with a hand grenade”, certainly there are dangerous people around the US regime who if empowered too far and given free reign with the sheer power of the US will do even more disastrous things for the world than we have seen so far.
One of the corollaries of the nuclear peace is never, ever, to get in a game of chicken.
If the Americans launch an all out attack on Russian forces then that is indeed pretty much where we would be. That’s one reason why I think it’s unlikely they will do that, and expect a more punctuated escalation to that point.
I have no doubt nevertheless there are voices around the US regime pressing for exactly that – an all out attack on Russian forces in Syria and damn the torpedoes. We just have to hope there are still enough grownups, or at least adolescents, around to keep them in their box.
If you mean the Chinese, most likely all they need to do is play it absolutely straight.
Based on past experience with US sphere manipulation of UN bodies over Iraq and Iran, there will be huge pressure including all kinds of dirty dealings and personal manipulation on individual representatives to try to ensure that the precise wording that emerges suits US sphere purposes, or can be twisted to do so in a compliant media.
I don’t know if this was reported in English language media, but the comments by Russia’s ambassador in London were uncharacteristically harsh. He said Russia will exert maximum pressure on the British authorities and will not let them out of the rut they’ve put themselves in.
https://lenta.ru/news/2018/03/16/podnyalos_davlenie/
This is a real problem for patriots when your own government misbehaves.
It’s clear the UK government was gratuitously and deliberately offensive to the Russians, over and above any claimed belief that the Russians had supposedly committed a crime, and in that sense deserves everything it gets in response. But as is usually the case, it’s the government that misbehaves but the country that pays the price.
Serves us right I suppose for electing such noxious pricks into parliament and government, and for accepting such a compliant, manipulated and manipulating media. This is where I sympathise with Rurik when he argues that Americans shouldn’t be blamed for their government’s warmongering aggression, because they are victims of the consequences of manipulation, though Americans time and again elect and re-elect the ilk of McCain, Lieberman or Bush to office.
One needs to keep in mind that the OPCW (like its nuclear counterpart IAEA) has an unfortunate history of capitulating to the powers that be. The most flagrant example was the forced removal of its Director General in 2002 by John Bolton (a name still in the news, widely rumored to become National Security Adviser in the near future). This is confirmed by the New York Times, of all people:
I don’t think there’s a lot of difference in how we view these things. Mainly you are writing about a piecemeal American escalation, and the optimal response to that, while I’m writing about the response to a more or less sudden American attack to wipe out the Russian contingent.
I don’t think so, unless you mean the “of a type developed by Russia” vs. “by liars.”
By liars = plural of Bliar?
unless you mean the “of a type developed by Russia”
Yes, that’s what I was referring to.
The bosses of such organisations know not to cross the US too often or too openly.
Recall the famous Wikileaks revelation of what it takes to get to be Director General of the IAEA:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/julian-borger-global-security-blog/2010/nov/30/iaea-wikileaks
Those pesky other states and their quaint notions of being “fair-minded and independent”, eh? Who do they think they are, anyway?
One additional thought. You wrote that it felt like the runup to the Iraq or Kosovo wars. I agree, but it seems like it isn’t really Syria in the crosshairs, but rather it’s Russia. The hysteria is ramped ever higher. Which is needed, because I guess in case they truly got into a military confrontation with Russia, they would truly have to expect some casualties, and make the public accept it.
Anyway, this ever-growing hysteria is getting truly frightening. I’d appreciate if they ramped it down.
I go back and forth on that one, the extent to which a populace is ultimately responsible for its government’s behavior. I think the US is, in a lot of ways, a truly amazing and dynamic place with a lot of wonderful people. But even many of these people treat viewpoints out of the mainstream narrative as something not even worth considering.
On a different note, I actually heard, for the first time, an at least superficially plausible explanation for why “the Russians” might have actually done it. It goes something like this: There are generally accepted, unwritten rules in the world of spooks. One of them is that when a spy is caught, and then traded, it is expected that he completely retires from the game and finds an alternate profession. He got a very favorable outcome considering the circumstances.
Apparently, Skripal, together with his British handlers, broke this rule. Skripal continued to work for MI6 gathering intelligence, including meeting with former colleagues when they happened to be in London. He explained his interest in information as the desire to get “inside” for some or another business venture. His former colleagues believed his explanation, assuming he was sticking to the unspoken bargain. When it got out that the information had been passed on to the Brits, heads started to roll. That would mean certain aggrieved agents with the means and the motive for a revenge killing.
Anyway, I’m sure this theory can also be shot through with holes. I should also note that I don’t buy it either. But I’m at least willing to entertain it as a possibility.
They were sending people (from one or two generations younger than themselves) onto the battlefield. They weren’t sending missiles at their possessions and children.
If Western governments starting firing missiles directly on the country (which would be more likely than vice-versa), then there will be some kind of automatic retaliation procedure, and missiles would be fired back on the Western countries that started firing. But otherwise, there will never be an attempt to fire missiles onto Western important areas. The current conflict situation is more accurately characterized by the words ‘mutual trolling’, or ‘trolling each other without actually fighting’. Both sides have some interest in low-level conflict, but that’s where it will stay. It will not go to a high-level conflict, and neither will it go to a no-level of conflict anytime soon.
Yes. Syria is the stalking horse to get Russia, in the minds of the neocon and Russophobe nutters.
Another straw in the wind:
France’s Foreign Ministry Tells Reporters to Stop All Travel to Syria
There seem to be burning straws floating everywhere you look at the moment. Confirmation bias or a real thing?
Time will tell.
As I wrote, it’s possible that they did it. I don’t think it’s the most outrageous thing in the world if they did it, but it’s definitely not nice.
Anyway, no one presented yet any evidence for this (or any other) theory.
Yes, I’ve see that one floated (in the comments on Craig Murray’s page, actually). I’m sure it’s around elsewhere as well.
I don’t take it seriously because of the complete lack of any apparent concern by British intelligence for Skripal’s safety. If he really was doing something out of the ordinary for an exchanged former spy, and it was known that this put him in a position where he was likely to be targeted by Russian security, then at least they’d have concealed his location and identity, or given him some protection.
Imo it’s just another superficially plausible argument meme, probably put out there intentionally to try to defend the imperilled narrative, that doesn’t stand up to any real scrutiny.
(In addition to the above point – not that I think anything more is required to refute it – it still makes no sense for the Russians to use a method that they know would cause them the absolute maximum of diplomatic, propaganda and soft power difficulties. If they want to “send a message” they could as easily do it by shooting the guy in the back of the head – you can be pretty sure other agents and Russophobes would get the message perfectly well once a couple of such executions had been varied out – and avoid most of those costs.)
+1 idea I’ve seen floated online now: Kill Snowden, presumably as a tit-for-tat to kill a “pro-Russian agent” who has taken up refuge inside Russia.
I agree, but sometimes people make stupid decisions. Or it could be that we lack so much information that it makes no sense to us but would make sense to others. Who knows?
Anyway, the behavior of the Russian government is consistent with them being innocent. The behavior of the British government, on the other hand… less so.
France’s Foreign Ministry Tells Reporters to Stop All Travel to Syria
And this:
Syrie: La France serait capable de frapper «en autonomie», déclare le chef d’Etat-Major français
France would be capable of striking “by itself”, declares the French chief of staff– if Syria crosses the “red line” established by Macron for use of chemical weapons (hint, hint).
https://www.20minutes.fr/monde/2239027-20180316-syrie-france-capable-frapper-autonomie-declare-chef-etat-major-francais
Now it makes no sense for the Syrians to use chemical weapons. They are winning the war anyway. They know that this was declared to be a casus belli by the major western governments. So if it happens, we know what the most likely explanation will be.
Now it makes no sense for the Syrians to use chemical weapons.
Let’s put it this way: it makes equal sense for the Syrians to use chemical weapons as for the Russians. All the preceding Syrian gas attacks were “false flags”, imho.
That’s what I’d put my money on, especially with Khan Shaykhun. But even East Ghouta.
Of course there’s always the possibility of the Syrians being stupid. I don’t believe they’d be that stupid now.
I guess they’d repatriate their citizens (especially their own children) right before it starts.
In 1917 the German Kaiser OK’d sending hundreds of revolutionaries to Russia, who would then go on to execute his cousin the Empress. In any event, the elites truly had little reason to hate each other, certainly less than the little rubes, who at least weren’t that closely related to each other and even had different customs, like a Russian vs. a German peasant certainly had different clothes etc. The Russian and the German emperors, on the other hand, were probably much more similar to each other in any respect. Both were of German blood…
Bojo promised we could have £350m a week for the NHS as a result of Brexit.
Are you suggesting that with an eye to the future and to prevent another Yeltsin, Putin has deliberately staged a provocation in order to get the West to pivot away from Russia, and thus insulate the country’s elites from Liberal cultural and economic infiltration?
Putin was gratuitously offense about the UK in the run up to his 2004 election and the whole thing has spiralled ever since.
No, I think Mr. Karlin meant the words he wrote.
But the problem is that many Americans, including politicians, media types and even ordinary people, genuinely believe that defeating Russia will be just as easy as defeating Iraq. It will be Desert Storm all over again. They believe that American casualties will be negligible and that the Russians will simply collapse. They really believe that.
So they don’t believe they’re running any real risk by provoking war with Russia.
Ordinary Americans aren’t worried because they’ve been told it will be a cakewalk.
What did he do?
By “casualties,” I meant “losing a few planes while destroying the whole Russian expeditionary force, after which Putin will fold.” I have heard this argument. The Wagner incident was also used as an example of how Putin won’t do anything.
I also believe that in their minds the Russian intervention in Syria is somehow an “aggression.” Just as the Georgian War is now a “Russian aggression,” too.
Because the Russians are the Black Hats and they’re evil so everything Russia does has to be an aggression.
When you’re considering U.S. foreign policy you have to remember that you’re dealing with people who see the world the way small children see it.
Small children or psychopaths.
Because they see all Russian military actions as aggressions, they therefore also think that it is the Russians who are responsible for any military confrontation that might follow. If you try to argue with Atlanticists that an attack on Russian forces might result in a nuclear war, then they reply that “Wow, Putin is such a madman! Truly like Hitler! Only to continue his aggression, he is willing to start a nuclear war!” Then they will be even more committed to confronting the “madman.” (It has actually happened to me in an IRL argument.) They don’t even realize that it’s them and not the Russians who is committing aggression. As you wrote, like little children. Or psychopaths.
The Russian deep state is staging a series of provocations and trying to make the West turn its back on Russia.
That’s why it’s crucial to fight against the establishment-controlled, corporate Western MSM of today. Today’s Western (Anglosphere + West Europe) MSM is the PRIME AGENT in deceiving, dumbing down and zombifying entire populaces, and making sure that their understanding of world events stays at sub-kindergarten level (what the kindergartens of a normal, sane society would be, that is….) Without the collusion and participation of this MSM, most of the evil crap wouldn’t work. Today’s Western MSM deals in lies, fabrications, Orwellian black-is-white concepts, hypocrisy, deliberately-fostered cognitive dissonance, ignorance, mass emotional manipulation, mass psychopathy – and above all, constant hate, war propaganda, and pushing of a semi-covert agenda at all times. It does NOT practice honest, fact-based journalism (except in reporting some strictly local happenings). Ideally, the bulk of today’s Western MSM should be shut down or radically restructured; and the lying criminal presstitutes hitherto forming the majority of its “reporters” and editors should receive appropriate punishment.
And why would you want to repatriate all your children, after your family invested fortunes in tuition fee and property in the country. It’s a completely undesirable situation.
There won’t be any crazy or irrational moves from the Russian-side, because the situation of ‘small conflict’ is exactly what is wanted.
A low-level of conflict with the West is desirable, and is felt a politically and culturally beneficial.
But a high-level conflict with the West is undesirable, since it will start to lower seriously living standards of the decision makers.
At the same time, a lack of conflict is also undesirable, and would be felt as dissolving a lot of government raison d’etre, and threat to the image of independent country and culture.
–
Relation between Russia and West, is similar to relation between Jews and antisemitism.
Jewish community does not want to be loved and embraced by non-Jews, because this would be a threat to their identity and lead to complete dissolution of their separate identity. If you try to embrace them too much, they will not react positively. (You saw recently the fake news circulated about Putin).
At the same time, Jewish community does not want to be hated, to the extent that they will be murdered like in the Muslim world, or too much lowered the quality of life.
The ideal situation for Jewish community, is a mild level of antisemitism – not too much, not too little.
Something like this is how Russia’s decision makers – like to relate to the West. Not embraced and loved, and not hated and at war.
The ideal is a mild conflict. Nobody wants to escalate to a big conflict, and neither do they want a happy peace and lack of all conflict (which would be felt as some kind of subjugation).
As for the Western side, that is a different matter, and if any crazy moves come, it will be from their side.
Interesting…
https://www.rt.com/news/421591-uk-produce-novichok-agent/
I don’t believe Russians would initiate the conflict itself, but I can imagine them first using nuclear weapons.
Anyway, let’s hope we won’t find out.
The death of Gareth Williams has been brought up on a closed Hungarian discussion group. His death is also attributed to the Russians. To be honest, I can imagine that it was so. But how very different it was! No nuclear isotope was used. He might have been poisoned (even, who knows, Novichok?), but no trace of the poison was found. (I don’t know if Novichok is easy to detect.) The victim was killed in his own home, under mysterious circumstances, no civilians were killed or injured. His death was found out days later. His body was inside a plastic bag (which I guess hastened decomposition). Again, difficult to detect.
Anyway, it caused very little scandal (it certainly escaped me at the time) and no diplomatic retaliation. I guess this is how an intelligence service might kill someone, though there’s no conclusive evidence that it was the Russian (or any other) intelligence service who killed him. Such lack of evidence is also part of the fingerprint of an intelligence service (or other professional murderers), I guess.
Polonium, or a very unique (yet ineffectual) nerve gas, on the other hand… not so much.
The Western actions, are the ‘unknown’ part of the equation.
But I have some faith that they are not so crazy as they might sometimes appear. The UK itself, even with a hysteria in the media atmosphere, will I think not take any serious actions. Their economy relies on Russia money. There’s an article on vox.com today which analyses that the UK cannot take any serious economic actions, because they would undermine their own economy which does that. They cite a figure of tens of billions of dollars a year of trade with the UK economy.
One can certainly hope so. But there’s the cautionary tale of the First World War.
It can’t be RF security services and related outfits. Especially those where the line between the state and organized crime gets blurred. Just can not.
It’s all dem Joos, closely working with US Deep State with a little help from M.I-5, 6, S.A.S. and the rest of H.M.G. related acronyms.
Just…….not……….Russians. Ever.
Or at least that’s what the majority here will explain to you, shortly.
The death of Gareth Williams has been brought up on a closed Hungarian discussion group. His death is also attributed to the Russians.
It’s now also a topic du jour in the UK:
I can easily imagine it was done by them. It has the fingerprints of a professional intelligence service on it, which is to say, no fingerprints at all. It’s interesting that it caused no hysteria at all. But I guess Putin just couldn’t resist doing something eviler.
Just for the record, let me draw your attention to the fact that for example yours truly never said it was impossible that the Russians did it. I just had my doubts about such a quick proclamation of guilt before the investigation was over. Also the behavior of the UK raised some suspicions.
At this moment I have my doubts about the Russians, too. They deny ever having developed (or trying to develop) such weapons. Which I tend to believe to be untrue.
I think you are missing the point here.
The start of the point is the concentrated effort by the “Team Russia” here. Nor that important, though.
The point is that we see here the same approach we see from “teams”, fanboys and groupies everywhere. Everywhere.
People here love to believe only critical, free thinkers tend to gather here. No.
Bottom line: we………here….are as full of shit as everywhere else.
Agendas, egos, fanboys, groupies and the rest of human (psych ) excrement.
Including me, of course.
The only redeeming, and I keep admitting, great factor is the owner and the mods.
That’s the only difference when you compare this zine with the rest of the Internet, or public written/spoken word. Opposing views are, still, allowed.
All the rest……..hehe….not much reason to be too proud about.
Do many people think that?
I would have thought most simply recognise that the zealots of both sides on pretty much any issue are free to make their points here. Which is the whole point of free speech of course.
Does that particularly attract “critical freethinkers”. Well yes, but no more than it attracts zealots, especially of causes that are elsewhere censored and their arguments suppressed.
Yes.
Zealots and free/critical thinkers only, you say, apparently.
Not……..quite that simple.
You also have a “healthy” dose of egomaniacs, weirdos, creeps, sociopaths, and, I just have a feeling, even a couple of pure psychopaths.
Honestly, often the best part visiting this site is “watching” all that…. mini-society. And people posting here, at least, have some brains, expertise, skills, attitude. And then you look around in “real” life.
And, one person, one vote.
Great, a?