German ‘Novichok poisoning’ claims over Navalny will prompt familiar circus of sanctions & Russia demonisation. But who benefits?

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George Galloway • RT.com
ANNOTATIONS & SIDEBARS BY PATRICE GREANVILLE

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Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny in one of his many rabble-rousing appearances. He is described by Western media as an "opposition "leader" but has never commanded more than 2% of the vote. His ties to the CIA are a matter of public record. In reality Navalny is far more likely to be a color revolution asset in Washington's ongoing hybrid war against Russia.

The bizarre events surrounding Alexey Navalny, who lies stricken in a coma in Berlin, will bring forth more Cold War-style calls to isolate Russia, at the cost of further consolidating relations between Moscow and Beijing.

Ever since the man – always wrongly billed as “the Russian Opposition leader,” when in fact he polls 2% of the vote, and the actual opposition leader is a Communist who still has mass support – took ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow, the securocratic lobby in western countries has been primed.

Today, with the statement from the German government that Navalny is yet another victim of ‘Novichok’-class chemical agents, active measures are already underway.

Former British intelligence officer Philip Ingram MBE, whom I interviewed today for my Sputnik TV show, had to hurry me up because “the Germans have just spoken the word Novichok and I expect to be busy with other interviews.”

 

 

If the Russian state had attempted to assassinate Navalny, they would never have allowed his stricken comatose body to be flown out of the country to Germany in the first place. He would have died on the operating table in Russia, where nobody could “detect traces of Novichok” in a NATO capital.

If the Russian state was responsible for trying to kill Navalny, surely the LAST weapon in the whole world it would have chosen with which to do so would be Novichok?

A butter knife, a gun, a speeding car, a car crash – any one of a hundred methods would surely have been preferable in the post-Skripal era. And more reliable, it would appear: Navalny, for now mercifully, is the THIRD Russian in a row to be attacked by a DEADLY “military-grade nerve agent” and mysteriously fail to die.

But just like with the Skripals, we come up against the question asked in every murder mystery: Cui Bono? Who benefits?

What conceivable gain would the Kremlin stand to make in the killing by Novichok of Alexey Navalny?

And the huge contradiction, the biggest of all, is that the West wants us to believe Vladimir Putin is at one and the same time a dazzling Mephistopheles capable of arranging elections in America and Britain, fixing Brexit, and fomenting separatism from Scotland to Spain, whilst at the same time being a blithering, self-harming idiot. The cop that couldn’t shoot straight. The man who brought the whole western world down on his head through not one, but two failed attempts to dispose of utterly harmless marginal critics – who, in the case of Alexey Navalny, would be incapable of winning a single seat in a provincial local authority. 

S I D E B A R
Commentary by Patrice Greanville
The big guns of US media eagerly join in. EVERYTHING you hear in this clip is a complete lie, a masterpiece of innuendo, but par for the course in the life of US journos, whose actual task, as leading members of the American hybrid warfare machinery, is above all to carry the US state dept. line. The fact the German government is supporting the lie does not make it true as we know by now how EU vassals, especially London and Berlin, abjectly close ranks with Washington when it comes to anti-Russian psyops.—PG

BELOW: Clip by CBS Evening News, 22 Aug 2020. 

And here's one by Reuters, one of the biggest world press services, on the same topic:

I’m travelling at the moment, filming my forthcoming documentary on the strange death of Dr David Kelly – the British weapons inspector caught up in the Blair War on Iraq – who was found stone dead at the height of the publicity surrounding him. So I don’t have my crystal ball to consult. But I nonetheless predict that what will now happen will be the familiar circus of diplomatic expulsions, sanctions and ostracism. Further demonisation of Russia. Tit for tat. As the world faces a deadly pandemic and economic collapse. Just what the doctor ordered...

'Trust in news and current affairs has never been more important, and RT's failures to preserve due impartiality were serious and repeated.' —Ofcom mouthpiece (Newspeak dept.)

RELATED: Watch how the putrid British establishment (in reality an anglo-american Borg) persecutes RT.com and George Galloway. Not content with the Assange judicial infamy, they are now levying huge fines on RT.com in an effort to bankrupt the channel and finally shut it down, while pretending that free speech is sill alive and well in the kingdom. Please examine closely this dispatch by the British MAIL ONLINE, offshoot of The Daily Mail.—P. Greanville

George Galloway's RT news channel loses High Court challenge over £200,000 fine for biased coverage of novichok poisonings and Syria

  • Russian state news channel RT has lost London High Court challenge over fine
  • Ofcom found it had failed to meet requirement to present news impartially
  • Sanctioned broadcasts include two editions of Sputnik hosted by ex-MP George Galloway covering the novichok poisonings in Salisbury
  • Kremlin-backed RT says that it intends to appeal today's High Court judgment 

JACK WRIGHT FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 10:15 EDT, 27 March 2020 | UPDATED: 11:14 EDT, 27 March 2020

 Russian state news broadcaster RT has lost a London High Court challenge over a £200,000 fine for 'serious and repeated' breaches of impartiality rules over broadcasts on the Salisbury poisoning and the war in Syria.

Ofcom, the UK's broadcasting watchdog, sanctioned the Kremlin-backed channel over seven news and current affairs programmes between March 17 and April 26, 2018 which failed the requirement for news to be presented with 'due impartiality'. 

Two of the sanctioned broadcasts were editions of Sputnik presented by former MP George Galloway which covered the poisoning of Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, Wiltshire, in March 2018.

Ofcom also found that four news broadcasts addressing US involvement in the Syrian conflict, and a programme concerning the Ukrainian Government's position on Nazism and the treatment of Roma gypsies, breached impartiality rules.

RT challenged Ofcom's decision, arguing that it breached its right to freedom of expression, and that the official watchdog failed to take account of the 'dominant media narrative' in relation to the Salisbury poisoning. 

Ofcom sanctioned RT broadcasts including two editions of Sputnik hosted by former British MP George Galloway on the novichok poisoning in Salisbury, 2018
Alleged novichok poisoners Ruslan Boshirov (left) and Alexander Petrov (right), accused by UK authorities of attempting a hit on former GRU officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia

Alleged novichok poisoners Ruslan Boshirov (left) and Alexander Petrov (right), accused by UK authorities of attempting a hit on former GRU officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia

At a High Court hearing in October, RT's lawyers said the dominant media narrative from other broadcasters was the UK Government's belief that the Russian state had been involved in the attack, meaning RT did not need to reproduce it.

However, Lord Justice Dingemans - sitting with Dame Victoria Sharp, the president of the Queen's Bench Division - today dismissed RT's claim.   

The judge said RT's 'concept of a dominant media narrative is a nebulous one', which would make it 'difficult, if not impossible, for broadcasters to discern in advance precisely what the dominant media narrative was, and what could be broadcast'.

He added: 'RT's submission that the dominant media narrative reduces the harm from the broadcasts in my judgment misses the point about the importance of the viewers who are not aware of the other viewpoint.'

The judge also rejected RT's contention that the 'due impartiality' requirement in news broadcasts interfered with its right to freedom of expression.

He said the requirement was necessary because 'at present, the broadcast media maintains a reach and immediacy that remains unrivalled by other media'. British politicians including Alex Salmond (left) and Nigel Farage (right) have appeared on RT

By the book. Following US practice to delegitimate dissident sources of news, Daily Mail attaches this warning to this image: "RT receives funding from the Russian state (pictured, President Vladimir Putin)".

Justice Dingemans state: 'There is reason to consider that the need is at least as great, if not greater than ever before, given current concerns about the effect on the democratic process of news manipulation and of fake news.'

Ofcom v Russia: another battlefield in the New Cold War 

Relations between Moscow and Western powers first soured after the former's war with Georgia in 2008, backing separatists in the tiny Caucasian state.

Russia annexed Crimea and helped fuel Ukraine's bloody civil war, which began after the toppling of the pro-Moscow regime in 2014. (By the US, of course, with help from Germany and NATO. Not mentioned, of course. And Crime freely voted itself back into the Russian Federation.—Ed)

Moscow has found itself at loggerheads with the US, Britain, and France in Syria, where it has backed Bashar al-Assad and Iran since 2015. (No mention of the West's criminal meddling in Syria nor their support for the barbaric ISIS/A Qaeda fanatics they claim to be fighting.—Ed)

Vladimir Putin has lamented the collapse of the USSR, and accused NATO of provocation since the end of the Cold War in 1989-91. (What is NOT true about that?—Ed)

The judge said 'where viewers access news on media which is not the subject of a requirement of "due impartiality", they may receive only one viewpoint to the exclusion of other viewpoints'.

'In such circumstances a viewer may interact only with one viewpoint, and the media accessed by that viewer may become 'an echo chamber' or 'information silo' for that single viewpoint,' Justice Dingemans added. 

He concluded RT were not restricted from broadcasting the material they wished to broadcast on the Salisbury poisoning, the war in Syria, or on events in Ukraine.

'The only requirement was that, in the programme as broadcast, RT provided balance to ensure that there was "due impartiality",' he said. 

Ofcom said it welcomes today's judgments that its investigation and decisions were 'fair and proportionate'. (Ha ha ha haha !  —Ed)

A spokesperson added: 'Trust in news and current affairs has never been more important, and RT's failures to preserve due impartiality were serious and repeated.' 

RT said: 'We are aware of the court's decision, and we intend to appeal.'

The broadcaster previously warned British media working in Russia to get 'ready to face the consequences' after it was fined £200,000 last year.

British politicians including Jeremy Corbyn, Alex Salmond, and Nigel Farage have appeared on RT, which receives money from the Russian Government.

The PM's father Stanley Johnson has also appeared on the news channel, and several Tory MPs including the former Brexit minister Steve Baker. 

O Yes. Having created a huge buzzword  to accuse Russia of international criminality, precisely what the US alliance is guilty of, the shameless Western media machinery is at it again, capitalizing on their previously created Skripal tsunami of BS. (Art by George Burchett © 2020.)

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT. Hey, but they DO represent the views of The Greanville Post. 

 

George Galloway
George Galloway was a member of the British Parliament for nearly 30 years. He presents TV and radio shows (including on RT). He is a film-maker, writer and a renowned orator. Follow him on Twitter @georgegalloway

 

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