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As I noted on 8 March 2020, citing mainly Helmer’s book, and linking to his published articles, “the much-publicized British-alleged ‘Russian novichok’ 4 March 2018 Salisbury England poisoning of the Russian-British double-agent Sergei Skripal and of his visiting daughter Yulia was never conclusively sourced as having been at all a Russian operation; and both of the victims are being held against their wills in UK though they seem to want to return to Russia, but are prohibited from being able to communicate to the public or to answer any questions out of the presence of their British and American holders (basically being imprisoned by UK without any trial and with not even an appearance in court).” Furthermore, “Chapter 23 of Helmer’s book is a reprint of his 8 December 2019 online article, ‘The Skripals Under US Control at a USAF Nuclear Bomber Base in Fairford, Gloucestershire’, and it clearly proves the U.S. Government’s participation in their imprisonment. Such U.S. involvement does not fit, at all, with the propagandized ‘news’ reports about the Skripal case.” As Helmer reported there, the first thing that Yulia (apparently the first of the two to regain consciousness) tried to do after recovering was to speak with her family in Russia, but “the telephone call was unauthorized by hospital officials and required Skripal to hide from her guards.” (It was brief, and rushed.) Furthermore, as Helmer reported on 5 April 2018, “In Moscow, her cousin Victoria Skripal has told the Russian press she has repeatedly tried to telephone her cousin on the latter’s Russian mobile telephone, but that this device has been disconnected.”
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This article is part of an ongoing series of dispatches by historian Eric Zuesse
The Skripals enjoying Western "hospitality", along with highhanded piracy. British PM Theresa May and her counterparts in Washington set records for sheer lawlessness. And these are the nations that pretend to be exemplars for the world.
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n 4 March 2018, both Sergei Skripal and his daughter who was visiting from their shared home country of Russia, Yulia Skripal, were poisoned in Salisbury England, and — though both survived — neither of them has been allowed to communicate to the public except under the watch of their British court-appointed ‘guardians’. They also have been prohibited to communicate with any Russians. Repeated efforts by the Russian Embassy to be allowed to communicate with them have been rejected by the UK Government. The BBC reported on 18 May 2018, that, “Ms Skripal was released on 9 April and was moved to a secure location. It is not known whether Mr Skripal has been taken to the same location as his daughter.” UK’s National Health Service issued a news-release that same day headlined “Sergei Skripal discharged from Salisbury District Hospital”. Efforts by (at least) Ms. Skripal, to communicate with members of her family in Russia, and also with her fiancé, also in Russia, have been blocked by the UK Government. No legal charges have been filed against either of the Skripals. [Because they would be legally indefensible.—Ed)
The “Court of Protection … Date 22/03/2018” proceeding, which seems to have determined their legal fate, didn’t even consult any of their relatives, and, according to John Helmer’s terrific book just issued, Skripal in Prison, (p. 74), also “The Russian Government was not consulted or informed in advance” about the proceeding, and therefore was allowed no role whatsoever in deciding the outcomes regarding these two Russian citizens. The UK Court’s ruling, on 22 March, stated that “Neither Mr Skripal nor Ms Skripal appear to have relatives in the UK although they appear to have some relatives in Russia. The SSHD [Secretary of State for Home Development] have not sought to make contact with them.” No explanation was provided on why. So, the Skripals are stranded. We don’t know whether either of the Skripals has even been informed that the Russian Embassy was trying to make contact with them. They might both have been (and now remain) deceived to think that they have been simply abandoned by their country.
As usual the British media led the charge in the use of the fabricated Skripal affair to demonise Putin and Russia. The mark of a Western psyop is obvious.
The youtube of the call — as recorded, somehow, at the other end, in Russia — was soon taken down by youtube. But Britain’s Daily Mail, perhaps their least-censored major newspaper, published the transcript of it, on the day of the call, 5 April 2018, and closed by noting: “The call is only 1 minute 47 seconds. The voice purporting to be Yulia sounded weak and tense.” Furthermore, when Yulia’s cousin, “Victoria,” told her she wanted to fly to visit with them there, Yulia said: “No-one [referring to the UK Government] will give you a visa, Vika.” (In other words: she would be denied entry to UK.) Victoria nonetheless pressed, and Yulia was about to explain, and then just stopped herself: “here the situation is now…we'll deal with it later.” Victoria, apparently, now got the message, and so said “I know everything,” meaning: I understand — you’re not free to talk. The rest of the conversation were pleasantries, and expressions of mutual affection. Yulia’s “we'll deal with it later” expressed her belief that the UK would soon free her, but she not only hasn’t been freed: she is, effectively, in solitary confinement, wherever she is, or else is dead, though no announcement of her death has been made by the UK Government.
It’s all lies on top of lies — just mountains of lies, including calling authentic news ‘fake news’, and calling their own fake news ‘truth’. It is Orwellian.
On 19 July 2018, Vladimir Putin was interviewed by Oliver Stone, and when the issue of Sergei Skripal briefly came up, Putin said that “I have been told that he wants to make a written request to come back” to Russia. Unfortunately, Stone (a poor interviewer) failed to ask any good follow-up question (such as, “But isn’t he a traitor to Russia?”); but, if what Putin said there was well-sourced, then clearly not only Yulia but also her father are imprisoned by UK, without even the pretense to any court-proceedings in which either of them (or any representative duly appointed by either of them) has played any part — and with zero advocacy for either of them by the UK press, the U.S. press, or any other U.S.-controlled press. (Otherwise, only Yulia is being imprisoned in UK. But, then, if Sergei thinks he’s being protected by UK, why is UK not trumpeting testimony from him asserting his belief that Russia had poisoned him and his daughter? Apparently, Putin is correct, but UK won’t permit Sergei to file anything, at all. UK doesn’t want Sergei to be on the loose and accusing UK of having tried to murder both him and his daughter. So: UK is ‘protecting’ both of them.)
Fortunately, three great investigative journalists, plus an entire team of academics, all of these persons being independents instead of hirees, have been, separately from one-another, following the trail down the rabbit-hole of the Skripals’ case, and have discovered things that the Skripals’ imprisonment-without-trial, UK & U.S.A., joint Deep-State team, have been assiduously trying to hide (and successfully have been hiding) from the audiences of the Western ‘news’ media. Other than Helmer (an American who had served in the Jimmy Carter Administration but now lives in Moscow), there has also been the whistleblowing former UK Ambassador, and now also great journalist, Craig Murray, who likewise has a blog, and the third great journalist on this case has been the anonymous author of the “Moon of Alabama” blog. The scholars’ group are the Working Group on Syria — the people who first revealed that the alleged cause for the U.S. and UK and France attack against Syria with over a hundred missiles, on 14 April 2018, was based upon, and was claimed to be punishment of, an actually fraudulent, non-existent, Syrian Government gas-attack, against civilians in the Syrian town of Douma, on 7 April 2018, and was therefore an entirely unprovoked U.S.-and-allied international war-crime. A common thread between that faked excuse for an invasion of Syria on 14 April 2018, and the faked ‘evidence’ that Russia had done the Skripal poisonings, was the lying reports by the OPCW, saying that Russia did Skripal, and that Syria did the alleged 7 April 2018 ‘gas’-attack. If Western publics had been informed about either [the] OPCW lie, then the leadership of the OPCW itself would probably have been forced to resign, and the organization of the OPCW would probably have been forced to change. So, it’s these great investigators (journalists and scholars), against the UK-&-U.S.A.’s Deep State (including its ‘news’-media). (NOTE: The “Deep State” is the world's leading billionaires controlling most of the world's major powers' governments). However, because these independent investigators are suppressed in the U.S. and UK empire, which includes Netherlands and almost all the rest of the EU, the OPCW continues on as before, thoroughly corrupt. Thus, for example, on 13 March 2020, Russia’s RT headlined “Fourth OPCW whistleblower says staff ‘frightened into silence’ as watchdog brought into ‘shameful disrepute’ over Douma probe”, and, on 11 April 2020, the Syrian-American investigative journalist Steven Sahiounie headlined at The Duran, “The OPCW is used as a political tool against Syria” and reported the by-now shocking extent of incredibility to the reports that the propagandists who run the OPCW are publishing, which display a degree of sheer shoddiness that no longer makes even a pretense to being founded upon credible experts and evidence.
There clearly is an organized gang, if not an organized gang of gangs (including media-heads), (and let’s call this a “conspiracy,” because it certainly is that) which is behind all of this smearing against Russia and against any government that is not hostile toward Russia. Even with the ideological excuse for the Cold War — communism versus capitalism — gone, that supposedly ‘ideological’ war has continued on the U.S.-UK side. (Perhaps all of it can be traced back to the plan for world conquest which Britain’s Cecil Rhodes first described in 1877.)
On 24 June 2019, a highly credible anonymous analysis of evidence regarding the Skripal matter concluded:
No one who has looked into the case in any detail can possibly be satisfied that the account given by the UK Government and The Metropolitan Police is correct.
The narrative put out by the Metropolitan Police is not simply questionable, it is plain impossible.
I believe, today more than ever, that this affair is a carefully constructed drama to push Russia in[to] a corner and justify Western foreign policies in various places such as Ukraine, Iran and Syria.
Who really tried to assassinate Sergei Skripal? And why? Frankly, it would not surprise me a bit if we discover one day — 50 years from now? — that a Western Intelligence agency was feeding Skripal with a mix of information and disinformation regarding the alleged Trump-Russia collusion, knowing full well that this report would eventually end up at the FBI.
If true, that agency has played Steele, and therefore the FBI, like a skripal. [The name Skripal means "violin" in Russian.—Ed) This story is not over yet. Stay tuned!
The best summary of the evidence which led to that conclusion is here.
Without any doubt, the basis of the Robert Mueller report on “Russiagate” was loaded with lies and was not even physically possible. Speculation is one thing, and must be avoided at all costs, but lying is even worse — utterly disqualifying. And, yet, Western ‘news’-media routinely lie (usually by stenographically reporting the lies by officials, and then having the gall to call that their ‘journalism’, instead of their “propaganda” — and such allegations are then propaganda about propaganda, or meta-propaganda). It’s all lies on top of lies — just mountains of lies, including calling authentic news ‘fake news’, and calling their own fake news ‘truth’. It is Orwellian.
On 5 November 2018, “Anonymous” posted to cyberguerilla “a large number of documents relating to the activities of the ‘Integrity Initiative’ project that was launched back in the fall of 2015 and funded by the British government. The declared goal of the project is to counteract Russian propaganda and the hybrid warfare of Moscow. Hiding behind benevolent intentions, Britain has in fact created a large-scale information secret service in Europe, the United States and Canada, which consists of representatives of political, military, academic and journalistic communities with the think tank in London at the head of it.”
The Working Group on Syria headlined on 21 December 2018 “Briefing note on the Integrity Initiative” and presented massive documentation exposing further that organization, which had been formed on 22 June 2015 (barely over a year after the U.S. had seized Ukraine and thus started the final phase of America’s operation to capture Russia) and which organization quickly spread its tentacles throughout the institutions of the Cecil-Rhodes-founded U.S.-UK empire and thereby became fundamental to the poisoning of the Skripals and the cover-ups of that. (Explaining the Skripal case seems to me to require going even beyond the Integrity Initiative and to include the broader ring whose origin extends back to the plan for world conquest which Britain’s Cecil Rhodes first described in 1877.)
On this same day, December 21st, Craig Murray headlined “British Government Covert Anti-Russian Propaganda and the Skripal Case”, and he described the connections between the Integrity Initiative, and the Russiagate campaign by America’s Democratic Party, to restore that Party’s version (replacing the Republican Party’s version) of the Cecil-Rhodes-founded operation for an all-encompassing U.S.-UK global empire:
Now let us tie that in with the notorious name further down the list; Pablo Miller, the long-term MI6 handler of Sergei Skripal, who lived in Salisbury with Skripal. Miller is the man who was, within 24 hours of the Skripal attack, protected by a D(SMA) notice banning the media from mentioning him. Here Pablo Miller is actively involved, alongside serving FCO and MOD staff, in a government funded organisation whose avowed intention is to spread disinformation about Russia. The story that Miller is in an inactive retirement is immediately and spectacularly exploded.
Now look at another name on this list. Howard Body. Assistant Head of Science Support at Porton Down chemical weapon research laboratory, just six miles away from Salisbury and the Skripal attack, a role he took up in December 2017. He combines this role with Assistant Head of Strategic Analysis at MOD London. “Science Support” at Porton Down is a euphemism for political direction to the scientists – Body has no scientific qualifications.
Another element brought into this group is the state broadcaster, through Helen Boaden, the former Head of BBC News and Current Affairs.
In all there are six serving MOD staff on the list, all either in Intelligence or in PR. Intriguingly one of them, Ian Cohen, has email addresses both at the MOD and at the notoriously corrupt HSBC bank. The other FCO name besides Duncan Allan, Adam Rutland, is also on the PR side.
Zachary Harkenrider is the Political Counsellor at the US Embassy in London. There are normally at least two Political Counsellors at an Embassy this size, one of whom will normally be the CIA Head of Station. I do not know if Harkenrider is CIA but it seems highly likely.
So what do we have here? We have a programme, the Integrity Initiative, whose entire purpose is to pump out covert disinformation against Russia, through social media and news stories secretly paid for by the British government. And we have the Skripals’ MI6 handler, the BBC, Porton Down, the FCO, the MOD and the US Embassy, working together in a group under the auspices of the Integrity Initiative. The Skripal Case happened to occur shortly after a massive increase in the Integrity Initiative’s budget and activity, which itself was a small part of a British Government decision to ramp up a major information war against Russia.
Furthermore, on 15 July 2019, I headlined “Mainstream Media Hide Skripals' Connections to Russiagate-Trump Case” and documented the extensive crossover (including Skripal’s own UK handler, Pablo Miller) between the personnel who in Britain were crucial in both of those operations — and who were minimized in the press-accounts.
There are splits within any political organization; and, apparently, the false-flag operation against the Skripals was done by a ring that included not only representatives of UK billionaires, but also representatives of Democratic Party U.S. billionaires who are competing for power against Republican Party U.S. billionaires. This is a power-struggle within the U.S.-UK elite. Though that entire elite want to conquer Russia, they disagree on how to do it. The Trumpians want to conquer China and Iran first, but all the others are simply obsessed against Russia. The Skripals got trapped by the Russia-obsessed billionaires. (For another example of a split amongst the billionaires: one of Trump’s biggest donors, Peter Thiel, said in October 2016, “If you’re a single-digit millionaire like Hulk Hogan, you have no effective access to our legal system”, and therefore he donated ten million dollars to Hogan’s case against Gawker so as to beat the comparably financed case by the liberal backers of Gawker. This is the reason why the United States, which has a higher percentage of its residents in prison than any other nation does, has almost entirely low-wealth people in prison. In a sense, poverty is a crime in America, and only the super-rich can afford competent legal representation. The Hulk-Hogan-versus-Gawker case was well-financed on both sides.)
Back on 24 November 2018, “Moon of Alabama” had bannered “British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns” and opened:
In 2015 the government of Britain launched a secret operation to insert anti-Russia propaganda into the western media stream.
We have already seen many consequences of this and similar programs which are designed to smear anyone who does not follow the anti-Russian-government lines. The 'Russian collusion' smear campaign against Donald Trump based on the Steele dossier was also a largely British operation but seems to be part of a different project.
The 'Integrity Initiative' builds 'cluster' or contact groups of trusted journalists, military personal, academics and lobbyists within foreign countries. These people get alerts via social media to take action when the British center perceives a need. …
The now published budget plans show that more than 95% of the Initiative's funding is coming directly from the British government, NATO and the U.S. State Department. All the 'contact persons' for creating 'clusters' in foreign countries are British embassy officers. It amounts to a foreign influence campaign by the British government that hides behind a 'civil society' pseudo-NGO.
There is an important link in that article, at the sentence “Another file reveals (pdf) the local partnering institutions and individuals involved in the programs.” It opens up a pdf document showing the hundreds of email addresses of each one of the hundreds of Integrity Initiative participants in each one of the 33 countries, and there is even a person listed there in Russia: Vygaudas Ušackas, the European Union’s Ambassador to Russia, who had just then left the Lithuanian Government’s service to join the board of a Lithuanian aerospace company that’s registered in Cyprus in order to evade taxes.
So, if far more people are aware of the accusations than are aware of the lies and liars that are behind the accusations, then maybe the public should be demanding the press to investigate itself, and to begin that by demanding that all news-media which fail to expose the rot and falsehoods that their competitors are publishing will need to be dispossessed to the public within a year, with one share of stock going to each adult and answerable only to that — the public — and not to any investors nor to any politicians.
But, first, the public needs to demand that the UK Government release the Skripals at a public event, at which each, both the father and the daughter, will, for the first and only time in public, tell the world which country they want to be living in. Right now, neither is being allowed to do that. And, if it won’t happen soon, then when will it? It should be done within one year.
Otherwise: what is the UK Government hiding? And, if the UK Government can do this to the Skripals, then what visitor to UK can they not do it to? Maybe George Orwell didn’t write science fiction, after all. He allegorized future history.
Unless the Skripals have been killed or otherwise disposed of, they are still under coercive isolation by the UK Government, perhaps at a U.S. military base, as non-persons, who aren’t granted even the merely nominal legal representation that Julian Assange is receiving. (Donald Trump and Boris Johnson both want Assange dead and his fiancé and two young children to be deprived of his love and of his very presence.)
Maybe “George Orwell” (Eric Blair) knew and understood his country’s future more accurately than the vast majority of its residents today do, who are actually living in it.
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ERIC ZUESSE, Senior Contributing Editor • Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. Besides TGP, his reports and historical analyses are published on many leading current events and political sites, including The Saker, Huffpost, Oped News, and others.About the author
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