A team from the OPCW was due to arrive in Syria to investigate the alleged chemical weapons attacks in Douma on Saturday, April 14th.  However, that is the morning on which Washington, in coordination with France and the UK, decided to launch around 100 missiles into Syria.  Russia analyst and former British military officer, Paul Robinson had a good summary and analysis of the strikes at his blog :

What stands out for me is the choice of weapons in this attack: long-range missiles. The Brits, for instance, fired their missiles from close to their airbase on Cyprus. They didn’t come close to Syria. It seems that they were afraid of Syrian and Russian air defences, and they weren’t prepared to go to the effort of suppressing them, which would have required a long and costly campaign and would have run the danger of getting them into a war with the Russians. The Russian Ministry of Defence says that its own air defences didn’t get involved but that those of the Syrian army shot down 71 of the 103 missiles fired. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (not normally noted for promoting pro-Assad propaganda) claims that 65 were shot down. The Americans are currently denying this. The truth is hard to determine. It may be that the Western allies are right to be fearful of the Syrian/Russian air defence system. Or maybe not. What is clear, though, is that they don’t seem to be willing to take the chance. They also don’t want to get too deeply involved. So, they have limited themselves to firing a few missiles in an utterly pointless manner, while making some wild claims that this would ‘set back Syrian chemical weapons programme for years.’

This is playing at war. Unfortunately, it is symptomatic of how the Americans and the Brits wage war nowadays. They can’t resist getting involved, but the outcome doesn’t matter to them enough for them to commit the resources, and make the sacrifices, required for a successful outcome. So, in Afghanistan they committed themselves enough to stir up the locals, to flood the country with money which boosted corruption and filled the coffers of the Taliban, and generally to make everything worse, but not enough to win (which would  have required a simply enormous amount of resources). In Libya, they did just enough to push the country into chaos, but not enough to put it back together again. In Syria, they’ve pumped in enough weapons and money to thoroughly mess the place up (and in the process supply a whole bunch of people who really aren’t their friends), but not enough to overthrow Assad. And so on.

Now, to be fair, it’s a sign of some intelligence that they haven’t gone any further than they have. It would have been completely disproportionate to have done so. We must welcome the fact that in attacking Syria, they limited themselves to a symbolic gesture and stayed well clear of Russian targets. As I said in my last post, achieving the objective of regime change would require enormous destruction. It’s a good thing that our leaders aren’t prepared to go that far. The problem is, though, is that if they want to succeed that’s how far they have to go. If they’re not prepared to do so, they shouldn’t get involved at all in the first place. Unfortunately, they just can’t stop themselves. Consequently, they end up playing at war, failing time after time, while causing a lot of death and destruction in the process.

Robinson makes an excellent point.  These actions seem to just be an excuse to waste huge amounts of money on arms and to destroy countries whose leaders don’t comply with our wishes or are in the way of our geopolitical and economic desires.   There is certainly no will to stabilize or install a functioning government because, as Robinson points out, it would require too much investment in terms of human resources, which would also risk major casualties.

However, the bad will and distrust that builds as a result of these repeated actions and the propaganda that leads up to them has created a dangerous atmosphere between nuclear superpowers whose military personnel are in close proximity.  What if there is a slip-up in the “choreography” of these launches supposedly designed to avoid hitting any Russian targets?   What if Russians dial up the hotline to find out what’s going on and are put on hold for nearly a half hour as the Russian military claimed happened in 2016 when the Syrian army was hit in Deir Ezzor?   Why do we want to take it that far?  And why does our leadership keep saying and doing reckless things that the Russians have to allegedly provide a face-saving out for?

As for Russia’s response to this illegal attack on its ally without even waiting for the results of an investigation that might actually substantiate the allegations against the Syrian government, Russia analyst Gilbert Doctorow wrote the following:

For the Russians there could only be outrage. They were on the receiving end of what was a publicly administered slap in the face to President Vladimir Putin, who was named and supposedly shamed in Trump’s speech for providing support to the “animal” Assad. Putin had been calling upon the U.S. and its allies to show restraint and wait for the conclusion of the OPCW investigation in Duma.

Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, repeated after the attacks Moscow’s prior warning that there would be “grave consequences” for the U.S. and its allies. These were not spelled out. But given Putin’s record of caution, it would be surprising if Moscow did anything to exacerbate the situation.

That caution left the U.S. exposed as an aggressor and violator of international law. Since we are in a New Cold War, habits from the first Cold War are resurfacing. But the roles are reversed today. Whereas in the past, it was Washington that complained to high heaven about the Soviet military intervention in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, today it is Russia that will go on the offensive to sound off about US aggression.

But is that all we may expect? I think not. Putin has a well-earned reputation as a master strategist who takes his time with every move. He also knows the old saying that revenge is a dish best served cold. He has frequently advocated “asymmetric” responses to Western moves against Russian interests. The question of counter moves had already been on his mind since the U.S. Treasury introduced new and potentially harsh economic sanctions on Russia with effect from April 6.

In fact, Russian legislators were busy preparing to introduce in the Duma on Monday a bill empowering the Russian president to issue counter-sanctions. These include an embargo on the sale of critical components to the U.S. aircraft industry which is 40 percent dependent on Russian-sourced titanium for production of both military and civilian planes. There is also the proposed cancellation of bilateral cooperation in space where the Russians supply rocket engines used for U.S. commercial and other satellite launches, as well as a total embargo on sales of U.S. wines, spirits and tobacco in the Russian Federation.

Aside from the withdrawal of titanium sales, these and other enumerated measures pale in significance to the damage done by the U.S. sanctions on the Rusal corporation, the world’s second largest producer and marketer of aluminum, which lost $12 billion in share value on the first day of sanctions. But that is to be expected, given that the United States is the world’s largest economy, measuring more than 10 times Russia’s. Accordingly its ability to cause economic damage to Russia far exceeds the ability of Russia to inflict damage in return.

The only logical outcome of further escalations of U.S. economic measures would be for Russia to respond in the one area where it has something approaching full equality with the United States: its force of arms. That is to say, at a certain point in time purely economic warfare could well become kinetic. This is a danger the U.S. political leadership should not underestimate.

Considering the just inflicted U.S. insult to Russia by its attack in Syria, Moscow may well choose to respond by hitting U.S. interests in a very different location, where it enjoys logistical superiority and also where the counter-strike may be less likely to escalate to direct crossing of swords and the unthinkable—possible nuclear war.

A number of places come to mind, starting in Ukraine where, in an extreme reaction, Russia has the option of removing the regime in Kiev within a 3-day campaign, putting in place a caretaker government until new elections were held. That would likely lead to armed resistance, however, and a Russian occupation, which Moscow neither wants nor can afford.

Speaking of the restraint showed by Putin, I keep making the point that many pundits and politicians keep accusing Putin of being aggressive, yet they are constantly banking on Putin’s restraint in the face of a never-ending series of provocations.  Is there not some irony here?

Our corporate mainstream media did its usual despicable job of largely egging on the militarism.  Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) provides the gory details here and here.  Doctorow, in another article, followed the European media on the Syria attack and reported more variety of coverage and viewpoint, especially in Germany (which declined to participate in the attack) and Euronews:

The Die Welt online edition today discusses how the United States and Europe used the mission to test the battleground effectiveness of some of their latest weaponry.

Frankfurter Allgemeine has two feature articles, neither of which follow the American media agenda and might be said to show some independence of thought.  One article presents and defends the notion that the weekend attacks showed the Pentagon is “the last bastion of Sense” in the Trump administration. What they think of the President is self evident.  Meanwhile the other article tells us that despite the attacks Syrian President Bashar Assad will not give in and is holding to his chosen course, while the Russians are said to be counting on opening a strategic dialogue with the USA over arms control.

….To be sure, the most remarkable departure from the US media track that I note in Europe yesterday and today is on the television, specifically on Euronews.  The company’s motto is “Euronews. All Views.”  Nice sounding and usually irrelevant, but not this weekend. To be sure, the US, UK, French government accounts of what they achieved are given full coverage in each hourly news bulletin.  But at the same time, the Russians are given what appears to be equal time to set out their totally diametrically opposed positions: on whether any chemical attacks at all occurred in Douma, Eastern Goutha, on the violation of international law and of the UN Charter that the Allied attack on Syria represented, on its being “aggression,” on its link to the Skripal case.

In fact, on Saturday Euronews exceptionally gave nearly complete live coverage to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as he spoke in Moscow to the 26^th Assembly of the Council of Foreign and Defense Policy. During this talk, Lavrov divulged the findings of the Swiss laboratory which had examined samples of the chemicals gathered in Salisbury in relation to the Skripal poisonings, findings which he said pointed not to Novichok, as was reported by Boris Johnson, but to a nerve agent developed by the United States and produced also in Britain.  Lavrov likened the faked attack in Salisbury to the faked chemical attack in Douma.

Letting the Russians deliver extensively their views on what happened in Syria without commentary by their own journalists might be considered extraordinary by Euronews or any other European broadcaster’s standards, for which the public can only be grateful.

My mentor, Sharon Tennison, was in Washington DC in the lead-up to the strike on Syria.  Here is the atmosphere she reported:

Mood in Washington, April 8 – 13: The immediate possibility of war between Syria and Russia was on TV screens in hotel lobbies and congressional waiting rooms and tensions were felt behind closed doors in nearly every meeting. It felt like our capital was completely “locked down.” No one wanted to mention their positions on current issues. I’d never before experienced our capital like this.

Simultaneously, young families visiting Washington were innocently enjoying historic monuments, etc. In impromptu inquiries, I asked if they were paying attention to politics and got nonchalant answers back. Apparently they were unaware of the current situation. How could they not be aware? Maybe they view TV news as hyped up fictional TV programs? What a disconnect!

Photo courtesy of Center for Citizen Initiatives

“No, I will not tell you about war.  It is disgusting and should never happen,” Lena recalled her father telling her when she was a child and would ask him to tell her tales of his experience in the Great Patriotic War – as WWII is known in Russia, which took the lives of 27 million Soviets.  Lena, a wife, mother, and teacher of English and German, who is originally from Western Ukraine and lives in Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountain Region of the Russian Federation, was the first of four ladies from Russia to speak at the RMMA event in Walnut Creek, California on April 5th.

In her opening remarks, she explained the reason for her involvement in the program.  it was her father’s words that had inspired Lena to work for peace and the prevention of war.

Prior to Lena’s comments, Sharon Tennison of the Center for Citizen Initiatives introduced the evening’s 4 visitors from Russia and the history of the program that had brought them there.

Tennison’s earlier program in the 1980’s, during the first Cold War, brought groups of non-Communist Party Soviet citizens to visit Americans across the United States.  The Soviet visitors stayed in the homes of volunteer Americans for several days during their stay in a particular city.  During their visit, the Soviet citizens would meet community leaders, members of the media, business people and average Americans – who could all see for themselves that, in most important ways,  these were just people like them.  Groups of Americans had already visited the Soviet Union for the same people-to-people outreach, which had enabled Tennison to network with Soviet citizens.

With tensions between the West and Russia at an all time high in the post-Soviet era, Sharon has resurrected the idea.  After visiting Atlanta and two cities in Texas, the four Russian ladies were now touring the San Francisco Bay Area.

The second lady was Tatyana, who has lived in Crimea all of her life, the daughter of a Ukrainian mother and a Russian father.  She teaches English and history.  I met Tatyana during my trip to Crimea in October of 2015 .  For her opening, she spoke of the monument that was just erected in Yalta to FDR.  Yalta was, of course, the location of the famous conference of the “Big Three” (FDR, Stalin and Churchill) as WWII was winding down in 1945.  She wanted to remind others of the wisdom of FDR, who as U.S. president during WWII, was allied with the Soviet Union and treated the country and its leadership with respect, and hoped to work toward a peaceful post-war coexistence, despite ideological differences.

The third lady was Natasha from Krasnodar, a mother and business woman with experience in the agricultural industry.   I had also met Natasha on my October 2015 trip.

The fourth speaker was Ilyana, a wife, mother and hydro-engineer from St. Petersburg.

Lena, Tatyana, Natasha and Ilyana all took over an hour’s worth of questions from the audience, which filled the conference room, with probably 60 or so in attendance.  The most heated topics seemed to be the Crimea issue and internal Russian politics – particularly gay issues, media/propaganda and Putin.

When Tatyana attempted to provide a local, on-the-ground experience of what happened in Crimea during and after the Maidan protests and the illegal deposing of the democratically elected president of Ukraine at the time (Yanukovich) – which did not comport with the mainstream western media depiction – one woman in the front row shook her head and made it clear that she was not very open to Tatyana’s narrative.

When the subject of the recent presidential elections in Russia in which Putin won ~76% of the vote, an even better showing than was expected, a couple of audience members suggested that the elections were not free and fair.

Lena explained that there were 7 parties in Russia and that Putin ran as an independent.  All four ladies attempted to provide the audience with an explanation of why Putin is so genuinely popular in contemporary Russia, describing the chaos, criminality and massive poverty of the 1990’s (referred to by many Russians as “the crazy 90’s”) and the stability, lack of external debt, economic resurgence, decline in street crime, and renewed pride that the Putin era had brought.  One of the ladies, who admitted she did not vote for Putin, agreed that there was not yet a credible alternative to the current Russian leader.

In response to more questions about the allegedly poor state of human rights in Russia, Lena explained that each region of Russia had an advocate for human rights and children’s rights that citizens could appeal to.  The advocate would investigate the cases and serious issues were brought straight to the attention of the Russian president.

One member of the audience asked about the political opponents of Putin who seemed to mysteriously end up dead.  All of the ladies expressed skepticism at the claims of Putin being behind the deaths and cited the lack of evidence provided to substantiate the claims.  After pointing out that Russia was a very wealthy country with abundant natural resources, Ilyana asked the audience, “Who has an interest in portraying Putin this way?”

Naturally, the issue of media and propaganda came up with suggestions by one audience member that the Russians were subjected to propaganda.  The ladies explained that there was a diversity in the Russian print media and that Russians had access to international media, including American, via satellite and internet.  Ilyana asked the audience to consider the following:  “Who owns your media?  Do these owners have interests?  What are their interests?”

In response to another question on this, Tatyana explained that the New York Times Moscow bureau would periodically come to Crimea to report.  But they would talk only to a few people who represented about 5% of the viewpoint in Crimea, but they portrayed it as though it represented 100%.  “You see, they did not lie, but they distorted.”

One audience member pointed out that our revered NYT had promoted on its front pages what amounted to government-sourced gossip about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that led to a million deaths and the destabilization of an entire region.  He also added a cautionary note about believing unsubstantiated claims of political murders in far-away foreign countries.  “What if someone from another country believed the rumors and gossip about the Clintons being behind the death of Vince Foster and Seth Rich without evidence presented?”

On the topic of propaganda, Lena stated:  “I don’t think I’m brainwashed.  I live in Russia [and know what it is like there].  I don’t want to leave my country.  But I also have a son here in the U.S. and a grandson and a lovely daughter-in-law.  My heart is with you [America], but it is also with Russia.”

This is not the article I originally intended to post today, which had to do with four Russian women visiting a city in the Bay Area and having an exchange with a local audience on Russia and U.S.-Russia relations.  That post will be moved to later in the week.  Due to the grave nature of possible escalations between the U.S. and Russia over an incident that supposedly occurred in the town of Douma in Syria this past weekend, I feel compelled to provide information and analysis on that.

Off-Guardian has provided a good time-line of the alleged chemical attack and contextual events surrounding it, which I excerpt below:

• February-April 2018: The Syrian Arab Army has been making quick, decisive gains on the ground in recent weeks. Eastern Ghouta has all but fallen. Barring foreign intervention, the Syrian government’s victory is now all but assured.

• March 13th 2018 Russian military command claims US is aiming to strike Damascus on an “invented pretext”. Advises them against it.

• March 13th 2018 Syrian forces reported finding caches of chemical weapons in labs around liberated areas of Ghouta.

• March 19th 2018 Russian and Syrian military figures reported they feared the rebels would stage a “false flag” chemical attack in order to drag US/NATO into action in Syria.

• March 30th 2018 Donald Trump told a crowd at a speech in Ohio – and later repeated in a tweet – that the USA would be pulling out of Syria “very soon.” This is met with consternation in the capital and across the media.

• April 6th 2018 UNSC meeting convened – at Russian request – to discuss the alleged attack in Salisbury, UK. Every member of the UNSC who spoke was categorical in their condemnation of any use of chemical weapons.

• Night of April 7th/morning of April 8th…a chemical attack is reported by the US/UK funded “White Helmets”. The US blames Syrian govt. and holds Russia “responsible”.

Off-Guardian then proposes some questions that readers should be asking in light of the above time-line.   Read it here:

Douma Chemical Attack: Timeline of facts so far

CommonDreams posted a subsequent article summarizing the Russian government’s publicly stated position about the alleged chemical attack in Douma and its possible use as a casus belli for a U.S./NATO attack on Damascus in the near future which, would threaten Russian personnel stationed there.

Staking out its position ahead of an emergency UN Security Council meeting later in the day, Russian government officials early on Monday are warning the U.S. government and President Donald Trump from direct retaliation or further intervention in Syria following an alleged weekend gas attack outside Damascus that has caused heartbreak and uproar inside the war-torn nation, across the region, and beyond.

While Trump declared Sunday there would be a “big price to pay” for whoever was responsible for Saturday’s attack in the city of Douma—where local aid groups said at least 49 people were killed and footage emerged of people, including young children, who appeared to be victims of a chemical weapon or agent—the Russian foreign ministry responded by warning of “most serious consequences” if the U.S. took military action against the Syrian government of President Bashar Al-Assad before all the facts are known.

In the midst of what foreign policy analyst Phyllis Bennis described to Common Dreams as an “extremely perilous moment” in the region and for global conflict between major powers, the foreign ministry in Moscow said in a statement that elements of the chemical attack were “fabricated”—suggesting it was a false flag operation perpetrated by rebel militant forces within Syria—and designed to provoke further intervention or a retaliatory strike against Assad’s forces.

“It is necessary to warn again that military intervention under invented and fabricated pretexts in Syria, where at the request of the lawful government there are Russian military personnel, is absolutely unacceptable and can lead to the most serious consequences,” read the statement. “The aim of these false speculations, that have no basis, is to shield the terrorists and the irreconcilable radical opposition, who reject a political solution, at the same time while trying to justify possible armed strikes from outside.”

At a Monday morning press conference, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the Russian and Syrian government have been trying to warn the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which has been investigating the use of chemical weapons in Syria, that such an event was likely coming.

“We already had a chance to comment on the current situation before this current situation became reality,” Lavrov told reporters. “Our servicemen staying in the Syrian Arab Republic, ‘on soil,’ repeatedly warned—and the Syrian government also said about it—that a serious provocation is being prepared, aimed at blaming Damascus for the use of a chemical poisoning agent against civilians.”

U.S. ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley threatened unilateral action by Washington if the UN Security Council did not act against the Assad government for the unproven accusations against it.

Russia analyst Gilbert Doctorow detailed the response of the Russian ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya,  in a recent article :

To anyone watching the UN Security Council “debate” last night it is crystal clear we are in the last days before all hell breaks out. The wall of mutual contempt between Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya and US Ambassador Nikki Haley was on full display. Nebenzya took to pieces the entire argumentation of the US side regarding Douma and the ‘chemical attack.’ He detailed the rebel caches of chemical weapons and equipment for their manufacture that Russian troops have found in recently liberated territory of Eastern Ghouta and elsewhere. He spoke about the past provocations of faked chemical attacks including the one used to justify the US cruise missile launches on the Syrian air base at Sheirat a year ago. He linked the US training and support for terrorists in fabrication of chemical arms to the faked nerve agent attack on the Skripals in the UK, which he described as a vaudeville act. He heaped scorn on Haley for her denying Russia the status of “friend,”  saying that the US has no friends, only sycophants, whereas Russia has genuine friends, and seeks nothing more in relations with the United States than civilized discourse.  In response to this unprecedented denunciation of the USA and its policies of global hegemony, we heard from Nikki Haley the familiar story of how the UN Security Council could now either adopt a US resolution condemning the Assad regime, in effect, or admit its total irrelevance while the US continued on its own unilateral path to resolving the Syrian question.

In the meantime, there are reports of Russia successfully jamming U.S. drones in Syria and Washington sending a second missile destroyer to the Syrian coast to meet up with the USS Donald Cook, which is already there:

The next few days may see already a second US Navy destroyer entering the Mediterranean Sea, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources at the Pentagon.

“The US already has one guided-missile destroyer, the USS Donald Cook, in the eastern Mediterranean, where it could take part in any strike on Syria, according to US defense officials. A second, the USS Porter could get there in a few days,” the newspaper wrote.

The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet wrote that Russian warplanes had allegedly buzzed the Donald Cook at least four times, but the report was later denied by the Pentagon.

Newsweek is now reporting that, in response to Washington’s threats, Russia has placed its military on high alert:

 The Russian military has reportedly gone on high alert in anticipation of a potential U.S. attack on the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a Moscow ally accused of using chemical weapons in a seven-year civil war.

Leading Russian politicians and military officials reacted to President Donald Trump’s promise Monday to respond “forcefully” within “the next 24 to 48 hours” to the Syrian military’s alleged use of toxic gas earlier this week in rebel-held Douma, a suburb of Damascus.

 

Vladimir Shamanov, head of the lower parliamentary house’s defense committee and a former airborne troops commander, said Russia had an obligation to protect its ally. Syria has denied the chemical weapons charges and has called for the U.S. to withdraw from the country.

….ABC News reported Tuesday that the Syrian military deployed missile defense systems near Assad’s presidential palace in Damascus and that the U.S. destroyer was in striking distance of the country. Russian Beriev A-50 early-warning aircraft were deployed to the coast, according to Iran’s semiofficial Fars News Agency. The elite Black Sea Fleet has declared a state of alert, according to Al Jazeera.

Police officers stand outside a branch of the Italian restaurant Zizzi where an ex-Russian spy and his daughter had dined before becoming ill. Picture: Getty ImagesSource:Getty Images

By now you’ve probably all heard the most recent provocative news story that is causing the latest psychotic episode for the West with respect to Russia.  Former Russian spy Sergei Skirpal and his daughter, Yulia, having been seriously poisoned in Salisbury, England earlier this month.   Of course, the British government led by PM Theresa May immediately blamed the Russian government before a thorough and independent investigation could have been completed.  And FM Boris Johnson has been publicly running with the accusations like a bull in a china shop, claiming inside information that the government has solid proof of the poisoning agent and its origins.

We’ve all been down this road before – laying the blame for an event at the doorstep of an adversary or the latest country/leader out of favor with the U.S. elite – before anyone could possibly know with certainty who the guilty party is.  Pretty convenient, eh?

Of course, I’ve seen plenty of articles propagating the British government’s line on the matter, along with plenty of skeptics putting forth good points on why we should not jump to conclusions about Russian government guilt.  But perhaps the best write-up I’ve seen in the latter category is by Rob Shane over at the Blogmire.com, called 30 Questions that Journalists Should Be Asking About the Skirpal Case:

[T]ere are a number of oddities in the official narrative, which do demand answers and clarifications. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist or a defender of the Russian state to see this. You just need a healthy scepticism, “of a type developed by all inquiring minds!”

Below are 30 of the most important questions regarding the case and the British Government’s response, which are currently either wholly unanswered, or which require clarification.

1. Why have there been no updates on the condition of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the public domain since the first week of the investigation?

2. Are they still alive?

3. If so, what is their current condition and what symptoms are they displaying?

4. In a recent letter to The Times, Stephen Davies, Consultant in Emergency Medicine at Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust, wrote the following:

“Sir, Further to your report (“Poison exposure leaves almost 40 needing treatment”, Mar 14) may I clarify that no patients have experienced nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning.”

His claim that “no patients have experienced nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury” is remarkably odd, as it appears to flatly contradict the official narrative. Was this a slip of the pen, or was it his intention to communicate precisely this — that no patients have been poisoned by a nerve agent in Salisbury?

5. It has been said that the Skripals and Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey were poisoned by “a military grade nerve agent”. According to some claims, the type referred to could be anywhere between five and eight times more toxic than VX nerve agent. Given that just 10mg of VX is reckoned to be the median lethal dose, it seems likely that the particular type mentioned in the Skripal case should have killed them instantly. Is there an explanation as to how or why this did not happen?

6. Although reports suggested the involvement of some sort of nerve agent fairly soon after the incident, it was almost a week before Public Health England issued advice to those who had visited The Mill pub or the Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury on the day that the Skripals fell ill. Why the delay and did this pose a danger to the public?

7. In their advice, Public Health England stated that people who had visited those places, where traces of a military grade nerve agent had apparently been found, should wash their clothes and:

“Wipe personal items such as phones, handbags and other electronic items with cleansing or baby wipes and dispose of the wipes in the bin (ordinary domestic waste disposal).”

Are baby wipes acknowledged to be an effective and safe method of dealing with objects that may potentially have been contaminated with “military grade nerve agent”, especially of a type 5-8 times more deadly than VX?

8. Initial reports suggested that Detective Sergeant Bailey became ill after coming into contact with the substance after attending the Skripals on the bench they were seated on in The Maltings in Salisbury. Subsequent claims, however, first aired by former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Lord Ian Blair on 9^th March, said that he came into contact with the substance at Sergei Skripal’s house in Christie Miller Road. Reports since then have been highly ambiguous about what should be an easily verifiable fact. Which is the correct account?

9. The government have claimed that the poison used was “a military grade nerve agent of a typedeveloped by Russia”. The phrase “of a type developed by Russia” says nothing whatsoever about whether the substance used in the Salisbury case was produced or manufactured in Russia. Can the government confirm that its scientists at Porton Down have established that the substance that poisoned the Skripals and DS Bailey was actually produced or manufactured in Russia?

10. The former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has claimed that sources within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) have told him that scientists at Porton Down would not agree to a statement about the place of origin of the substance, because they were not able to establish this. According to Mr Murray, only under much pressure from the Government did they end up agreeing to the compromise wording, “of a type developed by Russia”, which has subsequently been used in all official statements on the matter. Can the FCO, in plain and unambiguous English, categorically refute Mr Murray’s claims that pressure was put on Porton Down scientists to agree to a form of words and that in the end a much-diluted version was agreed?

I strongly encourage readers to read the rest of the post with the remaining 20 questions here

Craig Murray has been following the story from the beginning and has been providing great feedback with an insider’s perspective.  A recent post from him points out that a judge’s ruling within the past couple of days has proven that Boris Johnson and the British government’s pronouncements of certainty about the specific type of poison used and its origins are false:

…due to the judgement at the High Court case which gave permission for new blood samples to be taken from the Skripals for use by the OPCW. Justice Williams included in his judgement a summary of the evidence which tells us, directly for the first time, what Porton Down have actually said:

The Evidence
16. The evidence in support of the application is contained within the applications themselves (in particular the Forms COP 3) and the witness statements.

17. I consider the following to be the relevant parts of the evidence. I shall identify the witnesses only by their role and shall summarise the essential elements of their evidence.

i) CC: Porton Down Chemical and Biological Analyst

Blood samples from Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal were analysed and the findings indicated exposure to a nerve agent or related compound. The samples tested positive for the presence of a Novichok class nerve agent OR CLOSELY RELATED AGENT.

The emphasis is mine. This sworn Court evidence direct from Porton Down is utterly incompatible with what Boris Johnson has been saying. The truth is that Porton Down have not even positively identified this as a “Novichok”, as opposed to “a closely related agent”. Even if it were a “Novichok” that would not prove manufacture in Russia, and a “closely related agent” could be manufactured by literally scores of state and non-state actors.

This constitutes irrefutable evidence that the government have been straight out lying – to Parliament, to the EU, to NATO, to the United Nations, and above all to the people – about their degree of certainty of the origin of the attack. It might well be an attack originating in Russia, but there are indeed other possibilities and investigation is needed.

The Russian government has, of course, denied the attack with Putin stating that if the Russian government had pulled off such an assassination attempt with such a deadly type of agent, it would have been successful and the Skirpals would be dead.  He also reiterated that Russia’s chemical weapons stockpiles had been destroyed under the oversight of the OPCW.   Indeed, readers can go here to see the announcement last October by the OPCW that the destruction process had been completed.

In sum, we need to see more actual evidence of such a serious accusation against a foreign government, especially when unsubstantiated claims have already been made, turning said government into a bogeyman (e.g. Russiagate).   It’s not like the U.S. and UK governments wouldn’t lie to us about grave matters involving life and death regarding foreign governments.   Remember Iraq and Libya.

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Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has written an article providing his expertise on the claims made by Putin in his recent Address to the Federal Assembly regarding nuclear weapons and defense capabilities.  As I stated in a blog post about this issue, it would be foolish for people to assume that Putin is bluffing.  Ritter comes to the same conclusion and questions the reaction of our highest-ranking defense officials:

The intellectual stasis displayed by both Mattis and Pompeo is disturbing. These are not so-called “experts” drummed up by the New York Times to further the anti-Putin narrative that has become the centerpiece of the Times’s coverage over the years, but rather serious professionals who hold the security of the United States in their hands. Putin’s pronouncements during his State of the Nation address weren’t a spur-of-the-moment articulation of fantasy, but rather, as he made quite clear, the byproduct of more than a decade of focused intent to counter the threat posed to Russian national security by America’s ballistic missile defense programs. Not only had Russia not masked its intentions in this regard, it had gone out of its way to make sure that the United States was aware of what it was doing and why. In 2007, Russia purposely leaked details about the RS-28 “Sarmat” heavy missile that featured prominently in Putin’s 2018 State of the Nation address to the CIA in a futile effort to get the United States to seriously engage in arms control negotiations.

The RS-28 is a direct descendant of the R-36 heavy ballistic missile, better known by its NATO reporting name, the SS-18 “Satan,” which over the course of its nearly 45 years in service has been an acknowledged game changer in terms of American-Russian strategic balance. The R-36’s large throw-weight (almost 20,000 pounds) allowed it to carry either a single extremely large warhead of 20 megatons or 10 independently targetable warheads of 500 to 750 kilotons each (by way of comparison, the American atomic bombs used to destroy the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War possessed yields of 21 and 15 kilotons, respectively). When the R-36 became operational, it gave the Soviets a genuine first-strike capability, able to eliminate over 60 percent of American missile launch control facilities and missile silos while retaining the capability to launch another 1,000 warheads as a second strike, should the United States choose to retaliate.

From its inception, the United States considered the R-36 the single most destabilizing strategic weapon in the Soviet arsenal and eliminating and/or limiting it became a focal point of American arms control efforts. The START I Treaty saw the number of R-36 missiles deployed reduced from 308 to 154, and the entire R-36 arsenal was scheduled to be eliminated under the terms of the START II Treaty. The decision by the United States to withdraw from the ABM Treaty in 2002, however, resulted in Russia withdrawing from the START II Treaty in response, and as such maintaining its fleet of R-36 missiles. Russia had planned on allowing the R-36 missile to be retired through obsolescence with no intended replacement; this was the intent behind its START II negotiating position.

Read the full article here

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On March 8th, a week after Putin’s announcement of Russia’s capabilities, 4 U.S. Senators broke ranks with the strident and overwhelming anti-Russia sentiment in Washington and wrote a letter to then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson,  encouraging him to enter into new arms control negotiations with the Russians.   As a reminder of how bad the state of our mainstream media has become, the letter by Senators Bernie Sanders, Dianne Feinstein, Jeff Merkley, and Edward J. Markey got little to no major press coverage.   The full text of the letter is reproduced below:

As posted on the website of Senator Merkley 

March 8, 2018

The Honorable Rex W. Tillerson
Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
Washington, DC

Dear Secretary Tillerson:

We write to urge the State Department to convene the next U.S.-Russia Strategic Dialogue as soon as possible.

A U.S.-Russia Strategic Dialogue is more urgent following President Putin’s public address on March 1st when he referred to several new nuclear weapons Russia is reportedly developing including a cruise missile and a nuclear underwater drone, which are not currently limited by the New START treaty, and would be destabilizing if deployed.   There is no doubt we have significant disagreements with Russia, including Russia’s brazen interference in the 2016 U.S. elections; continued violation of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF); invasion of Ukraine and illegal annexation of Crimea; and destabilizing actions in Syria. However, it is due to these policy rifts, not in spite of them, that the United States should urgently engage with Russia to avoid miscalculation and reduce the likelihood of conflict.

First, we encourage the administration to propose alternative solutions to address Russia’s violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).  Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov admitted to the existence of this ground launched cruise missile (GLCM), but contended that the system was INF Treaty compliant.

Senior officials from the United States and Russia have said that the INF Treaty plays an “important role in the existing system of international security.” As such, we urge the State Department to resolve Russia’s violation through existing INF Treaty provisions or new mutually acceptable means.

Second, we urge the United States to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START).  The Trump administration’s own 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) references Russia’s robust nuclear modernization program as a main justification behind the U.S. need to recapitalize its three legs of the nuclear triad.  An extension of New START would verifiably lock-in the Treaty’s Central Limits – and with it – the reductions in strategic forces Russia has made.

The New START Treaty, which entered into force in 2011, provides transparency and predictability into the size and location of Russia’s strategic nuclear delivery systems, warheads, and facilities. New START’s robust verification architecture involves thousands of data exchanges and regular on-site inspections.The United States confirmed in February that Russia met New START’s Central Treaty Limits and it stated that “implementation of the New START Treaty enhances the safety and security of the United States.” These same Central Treaty Limits could also govern two of the new types of nuclear weapons referenced by President Putin on March 1st – a case the United States can argue through the Treaty’s Biannual Consultative Commission (BCC).

Lastly, as the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review notes, Russia maintains a numerical advantage to the United States in the number of non-strategic nuclear weapons. The Senate, in its Resolution of Ratification on New START in 2010, took stock of this imbalance and called upon the United States to commence negotiations that would “secure and reduce tactical nuclear weapons in a verifiable manner.” Attempts by the Obama administration to negotiate an agreement on this class of weapons met resistance from Russia.  However, even absent the political space for a formal agreement or binding treaty with Russia, we urge the State Department to discuss ways to enhance transparency on non-strategic nuclear weapons.

Extending New START, resolving Russia’s INF violation, and enhancing transparency measures relating to non-strategic nuclear weapons will also help quiet growing calls from many countries that the United States is not upholding its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations.  The Treaty’s three mutually reinforcing pillars: non-proliferation, peaceful uses of the atom, and disarmament can only be advanced through U.S. leadership on all three.

There is no guarantee that we can make progress with Russia on these issues.  However, even at the height of Cold War tensions, the United States and the Soviet Union were able to engage on matters of strategic stability.  Leaders from both countries believed, as we should today, that the incredible destructive force of nuclear weapons is reason enough to make any and all efforts to lessen the chance that they can never be used again.

Sincerely,

Senators Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont)

After Putin won re-election on March 18th, President Trump called him to congratulate him on his victory, reportedly against the advice of his national security staff.  Commenting on the call afterward, Trump stated publicly that he would probably be meeting soon with Putin to discuss the “arms race that is getting out of control.”

Sputnik News reported that the Kremlin characterized the conversation between the two presidents as “constructive and focused on addressing the problems in Russia-US relations.”

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Conditions in Ukraine generally continue to deteriorate economically and in terms of human rights, but it’s also difficult to keep up with the general crazy twists and turns among the political class.  Granted, Ukraine has been a nation with significant divisions ever since its’ independence in the early 1990’s, mostly due to the fact that it’s western areas were historically under the control and influence of either the Poles or the Austro-Hungarian empire and the south eastern parts under the control and influence of the Russian empire.   It has not been uncommon to see corruption and fistfights in the Parliament throughout Ukraine’s post-Soviet history.   But since the Maidan and its reliance upon muscle from the far-right (e.g. Pravy Sektor,  Svboda and later the Azov battalion and the like), things are even more unstable.

For instance, Nadia Savchenko, once considered a hero of the Ukrainian nationalist movement who was convicted and jailed in Russia for her role in directing deadly military fire onto two Russian journalists and later released in a prisoner exchange, became a member of the Rada (Ukrainian parliament) and subsequently stated publicly that the far right groups on the Maidan were responsible for the murder of security agents and protesters.  She has now been stripped of her immunity as a parliamentarian and arrested for planning a terrorist attack against the government.  The Irish Times reported the following details:

Less than two years after Nadezhda Savchenko returned from a Russian prison to a hero’s welcome, the ex-military pilot dubbed “Ukraine’s Joan of Arc” is now accused of plotting to blow up Kiev’s parliament and massacre its deputies.The latest extraordinary claims from Ukrainian prosecutor general Yuri Lutsenko – who recently accused former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili of planning a coup in Ukraine – are stoking a febrile political atmosphere that bodes ill for Ukraine’s stability ahead of major elections in 2019.

“The investigation has irrefutable evidence that Nadezhda Savchenko, a deputy of Ukraine, personally planned [and] personally gave instructions on how to commit a terrorist act here in this hall,” Mr Lutsenko told parliament.

He said that after using grenades and mortars to destroy much of the main chamber and the glass dome of the building in central Kiev, she intended to “use automatic rifles to finish off anyone who survived”.

Within days, it was reported by the Russian news agency Tass, that Savchenko had in fact been stripped of her parliamentary immunity and arrested:

KIEV, March 22. /TASS/. Ukrainian MP Nadezhda Savchenko has been detained in Kiev. Earlier in the day the Ukrainian parliament has upheld three requests from Prosecutor-General Yuri Lutsenko for the indictment of parliament member Nadezhda Savchenko and for her detention and arrest.

The decision to strip Savchenko of immunity was carried by a 291 majority vote. Her detention was supported by 277 legislators, with 11 opposing it; 268 voted for her arrest, and six, against.

….In her final statement Savchenko said that Ukraine should reform its political system and give voters a chance to revoke legislators and hold referendums. 

“Ukraine does have a way out without terrorist attacks and other problems that may ruin it. There is a simple and legal way – a reform of the political system,” she said.

Last month, Ukrainian president Poroshenko said he expected US arms shipments to arrive within weeks.  It was also reported by  Defense News that DARPA, the Pentagon’s “hi-tech office” has been operating in Ukraine to help Kiev with its “hybrid” warfare against the Donbas.  Neither of these actions bodes well for the prospects of peace in Ukraine.

As my fellow blogger and geopolitical writer, Greg Maybury pointed in a recent article at Consortium News, a confluence of factors make an escalation by Kiev in the Ukrainian civil war more likely:

Earlier this year, Gilbert Doctorow reported that a new draft law adopted by the Ukrainian Parliament and awaiting president Petro Poroshenko’s signature, threatens to escalate the Ukrainian conflict into a full-blown war, pitting nuclear-armed Russia against the United States and NATO. “Due to dire economic conditions,” Doctorow says, “Poroshenko and other government officials in Kiev have become deeply unpopular, and with diminished chances for electoral success may see war as politically advantageous.”

As history indelibly reminds us, this is an all too frequently recurring scenario in the conduct of international affairs. In a statement that undercuts much of the furor over the Russia-gate imbroglio, Doctorow observes that in contrast to the image of Trump administration policies being dictated by Moscow as portrayed by proponents of Russia-gate conspiracy theories, “the United States is moving towards deeper confrontation with the Kremlin in the geopolitical hotspot of Ukraine. For its part, the Kremlin has very little to gain and a great deal to lose economically and diplomatically from a campaign now against Kiev. If successful, as likely would be the case given the vast disparity in military potential of the two sides, it could easily become a Pyrrhic victory.” [My emphasis]

Read the full article here

The scapegoating of Russia has taken on an air of bigotry and ugliness, based largely on Cold War-era stereotypes. In this article, Natylie Baldwin counters this intolerance with some of her positive impressions having traveled the country extensively.

By Natylie Baldwin

Over the last year and a half, Americans have been bombarded with the Gish Gallop claims of Russiagate. In that time, the most reckless comments have been made against the Russians in service of using that country as a scapegoat for problems in the United States that were coming to a head, which were the real reasons for Donald Trump’s upset victory in 2016.  It has even gotten to the point where irrational hatred against Russia is becoming normalized, with the usual organizations that like to warn of the pernicious consequences of bigotry silent.

The first time I realized how low things would likely get was when Ruth Marcus, deputy editor of the Washington Post, sent out the following tweet in March of 2017, squealing with delight at the thought of a new Cold War with the world’s other nuclear superpower: “So excited to be watching The Americans, throwback to a simpler time when everyone considered Russia the enemy. Even the president.”

Not only did Marcus’s comment imply that it was great for the U.S. to have an enemy, but it specifically implied that there was something particularly great about that enemy being Russia.

Since then, the public discourse has only gotten nastier. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper – who notoriously perjured himself before Congress about warrantless spying on Americans – stated on Meet the Press last May that Russians were uniquely and “genetically” predisposed toward manipulative political activities.  If Clapper or anyone else in the public eye had made such a statement about Muslims, Arabs, Iranians, Jews, Israelis, Chinese or just about any other group, there would have been some push-back about the prejudice that it reflected and how it didn’t correspond with enlightened liberal values. But Clapper’s comment passed with hardly a peep of protest.

More recently, John Sipher, a retired CIA station chief who reportedly spent years in Russia – although at what point in time is unclear – was interviewed in Jane Mayer’s recent New Yorker piece trying to spin the Steele Dossier as somehow legitimate. On March 6, Sipher took to Twitter with the following comment: “How can one not be a Russophobe? Russia soft power is political warfare. Hard power is invading neighbors, hiding the death of civilians with chemical weapons and threatening with doomsday nuclear weapons. And they kill the opposition at home. Name something positive.”

In fairness to Sipher, he did backpedal somewhat after being challenged; however, the fact that his unfiltered blabbering reveals such a deep antipathy toward Russians (“How can one not be a Russophobe?”) and an initial assumption that he could get away with saying it publicly is troubling.

Glenn Greenwald re-tweeted with a comment asking if Russians would soon acceptably be referred to as “rats and roaches.”  Another person replied with: “Because they are rats and roaches. What’s the problem?”

This is just a small sampling of the anti-Russian comments and attitudes that pass, largely unremarked upon, in our media landscape.

There are, of course, the larger institutional influencers of culture doing their part to push anti-Russian bigotry in this already contentious atmosphere. Red Sparrow, both the book and the movie, detail the escapades of a female Russian spy. The story propagates the continued fetishization of Russian women based on the stereotype that they’re all hot and frisky. Furthermore, all those who work in Russian intelligence are evil and backwards rather than possibly being motivated by some kind of patriotism, while all the American intel agents are paragons of virtue and seem like they just stepped out of an ad for Nick at Nite’s How to be Swell.

The recent Academy Awards continued their politically motivated trend of awarding Oscars for best documentary to films on topics that just happen to coalesce nicely with Washington’s latest adversarial policy. Last year it was the White Helmets film to support the regime change meme in Syria. This year it’s Icarus about the doping scandal in Russia.

Similarly, Loveless, the new film by Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev (director of Leviathan) is being reviewed – as Catherine Brown points out – by writers from the mainstream American media in a predictably biased fashion. The film focuses on the disintegration of a married Moscow couple’s relationship and the complicated web of factors involved which have tragic ramifications for the couple’s 12-year old son.

American reviewers manage to paint the factors detailed in the film that are prevalent in most modern capitalist cities (e.g. being self-centered, materialistic and preoccupied with technological gadgets) as somehow uniquely Russian sins. They also ignore a prominent character in the film that defies their negativity about modern Russia – a character that represents altruism and the growth of civil society in the country.

A common theme in all this is that Russia is a bad country and Russians can’t help but be a bunch of good-for-nothings at best and dangerous deviants at worst. Indeed, according to media depictions, sometimes they manage to be both at the same time. But what they don’t manage to be is positive, constructive or even complicated. Sipher knows that the average American has been deluged with this anti-Russian prejudice, as reflected in his challenge at the end of his initial tweet about the largest country, geographically at least, in the world: Name something positive.

Countering the Negative

Most people know, at least in the abstract, that few individuals or groups are purely good or bad. Most are a complex combination of both. But many – including those who normally consider themselves to be open-minded liberals – have allowed their lizard brains to be triggered by the constant demonization of Russia in the hopes of taking down Trump whom they deem to be a disproportionate threat to everything they hold dear. So as a counterweight to all the negative constantly pumped out about Russia and to take Sipher up on his challenge, I will list some positive things about Russia and the contribution of the country and its people to the world.

Continue reading the article here