by John Ward
WHO, ME?
The death of two spies, a trail of jingoistic nonsense, media blackouts in the High Court, hack attacks on Craig Murray’s site, a sudden rapprochement with the EU….and a transition deal sellout that pleases nobody beyond the 48%. Yes Boris, we mean you.
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With Craig Murray’s website now facing constant hacking assaults, the “Russian” poison attack in Salisbury unraveled a little more in the High Court last week, when the Porton Down analysis predictably offered a halfway house between what Johnson and May have been claiming….and what the PD scientists would’ve said without their arms twisted somewhat persuasively up to their shoulder-blades. The men in white coats said:
- The couple were attacked by “either a nerve agent of the Novichok class or closely related agent”.
- Er, that’s it.
Anybody see that reported in the Establishment media?
Boris Johnson has repeatedly said in interviews he was told the agent was Novichok and was “almost certainly” made in Russia. And Theresa May repeated this lie to the House of Commons. In fact, we have no proof whatever that the agent even originated in Russia, nor that it is Novichok, nor that it is even a nerve agent.
Given Yulia Skripal had just flown in from Moscow, it could well be that the attack was enacted there. Or it could equally likely have been an attack planned and executed in the UK. Lest we forget, Porton Down has in the past claimed that it has the formulae for every nerve agent type so far developed, in order to defend against them.
There are two points here: British agents could have carried out the attack even more easily than Moscow; and if the PD pointyheads have Russian chemical weapons taped, why the mass hysteria now about one assassination when this kind of tit for tat goes on all the time?
Let’s recap for a few paras, shall we
- Boris Johnson is recognised among friend and foe alike as an unscrupulous liar and perverter of Justice, with a track record of such going back twenty years
- The May Government lied about residents reporting to Salisbury hospital with ‘nerve-gas like symptoms’: the Health Authority flatly denied the claim
- The May Government lied about the condition of the policeman who found the couple as “very serious” when in fact he was fit to leave the hospital within 24 hours
- The May Government lied in suggesting he was a uniformed cop, when in fact he was a detective. (What was a detective doing there?)
- The May Government blocked a UN call for an independent investigation – which was backed by Russia. (Why?)
I am still struggling for the motive behind the Russian attack at such a sensitive time, given that very soon the country will be hosting the World Cup. This offers the Putin régime oodles of much-needed foreign currency: Why would they put it at risk?
On the other hand, even a cursory glance at the situation of the UK and its EUNATO allies offers a plethora of likely (even probable) motives for framing the Russians:
- The Skripals were triple agents and MI5 wanted them dead. (This has been mooted in the past: the father and daughter never convinced all their controllers as to their loyalties)
- As per standard game-strategy among secret services, why not kill two birds with one stone: do away with them and blame it on Russia, given Russia’s “form” in such matters?
- The May Government is weak and the Prime Minister herself viewed as a spineless political convenience. The perfect opportunity for some Iron Lady posturing.
- In particular, the Tories fear total annihilation at the forthcoming local elections: once again, the poisoning presented a viable Falklands factor.
- May is facing a brick wall in Brussels and dogged resistance among her own Remainer regiment. A broad show of loyalty and defrosting of EU/UK relations would be a win-win for her.
- The EUNATO/Mogherini axis hatched the plot, and offered May a “collective security” excuse to remain in the EU save for a few cosmetic changes.
- The British hatched the plot with a view to putting Brussels, Paris and Berlin on the back foot with the Americans.
My own feeling (see earlier Slogposts) is that the EUNATO motive is the more likely in one form or another….certainly, it has been borne out by subsequent events. But once again, key to that consideration is the recent behaviour of our old friend Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.
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In 2011, I highlighted two MPs as “the most dangerous people in Britain”. One – Harriet Harman – finally realised she was unelectable as Labour leader, and retired on her nice, fat UNITE pension….bitter and twisted to the end about all things male (not surprising, given she is married to Jack Dromey) and wrong about all things socio-political. Boris Johnson was the other.
In a nutshell, Johnson is the perfect archetype of a neoliberal driven by unchained appetites and a sociopathic lack of principle. On Brexit, I have always maintained that he waited to see which way Murdoch would jump, and then – at the eleventh hour – boarded the bandwagon. Michael Gove and others allegedly think in private that the City encouraged him get on the Brexit bus, so come what may they would have an ally among prominent Leavers.
The first thing BoJo did in the Brexit campaign was start lying….as he had over the phone hacking scandal, the Elm House affair, taxi emission claims made by his equally bent mate Tim Yeo, and his role in the Olympia development. His main interest in Brexit – as Foreign Secretary – seems now to involve denying his apparently central role in exceeding electoral rules on expenditure during the Referendum. Now and then, he briefly explodes about Juncker, Barnier or Macron; but he has played no role at all in the detail of the so-called Brexit transition deal.
He seems very happy with it, but if he is a genuine Brexiteer, it’s hard to see why: “We will take back control,” he told the Express yesterday morning….but the Northern Irish border issue is in abeyance, the fishing decision is a sellout, and immigration has been fudged. We have also ended up paying a ‘divorce fee’ which for many Brexiteers is a red line.
Now of course, in his new role as the man gambling with the future of Planet Earth, keen cricketer A B P Johnson has been very busy lying about what Porton Down experts told him about nerve agents. But even taking that into account, most of his keynote speeches and remarks on Brexit have also toed the NATO line.
“It is vital to stress that the UK will remain committed to the security and defense of our friends in Central Europe,” Johnson told a presser on March 2nd, “It is vital that we protect their rights, that we give them the encouragement they need … the reassurance they need.”
Ten days before that, he allegedly told German businessmen that getting a good deal out of Brussels had “turned into a mess”. That same deal (breaking seven promises made by May ministers) is more or less the one that has come to pass, but Boris has no complaints it seems. We have shaved nine months off the transition deal, but started it later than any Leaver wanted; the EU is also pressing London to honour a further €11bn of long-term liabilities; and yesterday Stormont politicians made it brutally clear they want a solid promise on the Irish border, not more flim-flam.
Johnson is foreign Secretary, and as such he will have been fully “briefed” on the various game plans by spies diplomats in place, the FCO and MIs with varietal number plates. On the Porton Down/Salisbury WOMD2, he is playing the role of one “gone native” to perfection. His “boss” Theresa May was Home Secretary for many years, and has retained all her useful contacts in Special Branch, the Met and military intelligence. She too never departs from the Spook Message on all things murky.
Both of them are committed to the Special Relationship (BoJo has an American passport) both of them are well-connected in the City (her husband is a BSD in that world) and neither of them can afford a major split in the Conservative Party (she would lose her job, and he would lose even the slim chance he might still have of one day becoming Tory leader).
As I pointed out in last week’s Brexit timeline post, the gratuitous dismissal of the City’s proposal to the EC for post-Brexit cooperation made in January this year may well have been the point that anxious calls from the Square Mile became too much for Johnson to ignore. One thing the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister passionately stick to is don’t rock the boat in Washington or the City.
Thus, while stumping about and talking about Britain’s New Place in the World, Boris is doing something entirely different out of the public eye. He has, quite obviously, been crafting the own-goal of all time for real Brexiteers – the Collective Security bogeyman. In that context, the Foreign Secretary has accused Putin of poisoning two British residents on flimsy ‘sexed-up’ intelligence, and made an inflammatory comparison between Putin and Hitler that is intemperate, insulting and jingoistic.
In short, he has joined the Military Industrial Complex, now adding his role in that to the ones he already has in the fabricatory Murdoch/Barclays media empire, and among those who steal wealth and sell worthless paper for a living.
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is and always has been one of the guys in the black hats. As long as he is Foreign Secretary, Theresa May is Prime Minister and Philip Hammond is the Chancellor, real Brexit is doomed. And the future of liberal democracy in Britain is facing its biggest threat since 1940.
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You read it here first: Time to purge the Treasury
