Intelligence is a complex subject, one reason why it’s never wise to rubbish an intelligence expert’s conclusions ungraciously. The expert will often turn out to be right and you may end up with egg on your face!
Intelligence experts often disagree of course, and can revise their opinions. An intelligence expert however usually stands a better chance of getting it right than a rank amateur. There were one or two frankly churlish responses to my last article, on Salisbury.
It now turns out that when the Spiez Laboratory in Switzerland examined samples of the Salisbury nerve agent, at the request of OPCW, they weren’t Novichok at all. They were in fact BZ, an hallucinogen developed here and in America. Boomps-a-daisy.
A tiny amount of Novichok was mixed in, but as the Russian government have been quick to point out, Novichok once mixed is unstable and would not have lasted the 14 days it took for the samples to reach Switzerland. Somebody, somewhere (Porton Down?) added some Novichok for good measure. As Downing Street’s case that Russia was responsible fell apart they needed a distraction, badly.
On April 6th Syrian forces renewed their offensive against Jaysh al-Islam terrorists in Douma, a suburb of Damascus. President Assad is winning the Syrian Civil War, big time. On the following day, at 1300 and 1630 Zulu (GMT), there were two reported chemical weapons attacks on Douma. These were immediately blamed on the Syrian government.
No one in Whitehall or Washington deigned to suggest a motive for such a bizarre move, not least at a time when President Assad’s Russian backers were under international pressure following the false accusation of Russian involvement in the Salisbury Incident. For all his faults, President Assad is a rational actor. His human rights record isn’t brilliant, indeed it’s on a par with Iran’s, but he’s not stupid.
What’s more, there were no overheads of the alleged attack. What do I mean by overheads? The alleged delivery systems were helicopters. The presence of helicopters over the target area would have been identified by satellite reconnaissance. Weather conditions were good – they often are over Syria.
Damascus has had heavy satellite coverage since the start of the civil war. Remember that a satellite does not have to be overhead the target area in order to capture imagery. A bird could be several hundred miles off track and still get useful oblique imagery, not least of a target the size of a helicopter. You would get electro-optical, radar and infra-red returns. There is no such thing as a stealth helicopter!
The US Navy also had at least one Arleigh Burke class destroyer within radar range. The Arleigh Burkes are equipped with a superb, phased-array radar system with the ability to detect targets at long range. Had there been helicopters overhead Douma at the material times the US Navy would have captured and recorded relevant radar returns.
It was noticeable that US Defense Secretary James Mattis was adopting a much more cautious approach than either President Trump or Theresa May, and no wonder. I have no doubt that those nice people the Defense Intelligence Agency, into whom I have bumped from time to time over the years, were telling him that there were no helicopters overhead Douma at either 1300Z or 1630Z on 7th April. So no chemical weapons attack then.
Any doubt was removed by the crudely faked photos knocked out by the White Helmets. If a real attack had taken place you wouldn’t need fake photos, indeed you’d have some real photos to offer.
The lack of precautions taken by the medical staff treating the victims was also noticeable. No way were they dealing with the aftermath of a chemical weapons attack. No doubt some chlorine had been distributed, but it was distributed on the ground, for effect. The victims weren’t victims of the Syrian government but of its opponents.
The same thing happened at Khan Shaykhun in April last year. Once again the White Helmets were implicated in helping to set up a false flag allegation against Assad. That attack was actually carried out by a NATO ally, Turkey.
The Russian government knew perfectly well that Assad wasn’t responsible. They also have good radar, and military advisers in Damascus. The MSM went ballistic when Major-General Igor Konashenkov blamed Britain for the attack, but the general wasn’t that far off the mark. The attack was undoubtedly coordinated from London, which partly bankrolls the White Helmets. General Konashenkov would have had access to the communications intercepts between London and Syria.
Where the general went wrong however, with respect, was in attributing the blame to the British government. Obviously Theresa May didn’t order a chemical weapons attack on Douma. She may be a Remainer, but she’s not a war criminal. The tasking almost certainly came from GO2, the German intelligence operation in London. You may have heard of it by another name – Ian Fleming, who was an active intelligence officer until his murder by German intelligence (the DVD, of which GO2 is a part) in 1964, used ‘O2’ as the inspiration for his fictional ‘Double O section’. It was a case of art imitating life. The villain in Moonraker (named after a German double agent in British Naval Intelligence tracked by Fleming before the war) wasn’t German for nothing.
Albeit in ignorance (she’s easily taken in, with respect) Theresa May sanctioned an armed attack upon a sovereign nation with whom we are not at war, on a false pretext. Furthermore the chemical weapons attack used as the pretext was in fact organised from London and a para-terrorist organisation funded in part by the Department for International Development was involved. To add to Theresa May’s woes President Putin has the transcripts. Whoops.
The PM will have to go. She will stay on as a caretaker whilst the Tory Party elects a new leader, who presumably would be a genuine Brexiteer, such as that nice man Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Why is UKIP giving space to blatant Russian propaganda?
This makes the party look stupid & gives succour to Putin’s murderous regime.
I’m seeing far too much of this rubbish, which only serves to promote the image of the party as a refuge for “swivel eyed loons”.
If this is where the party is heading, then I’ll be going elsewhere, despite a long standing support & membership.
STOP giving support to this drivel.
Well, Mike – instead of telling UKIP Daily what to publish and what not to publish (ever heard of Freedom of the Press?), why don’t you write an article for UKIP Daily refuting the points made in this article?
Mike, you call this ‘blatant Russian propaganda’ and ‘drivel’, I see it merely as an ‘alternative viewpoint’, one that doesn’t go along with the traditional ‘narrative’ that is spouted out by governments and the mainstream media.
“Question everything”. Instead of blindly accepting everything you read as ‘fact’, take the time to at least think about what is written in these ‘alternative viewpoints’ and then make your own mind up, before dismissing anything ‘alternative’ that goes against the ‘narrative’.
I’d much rather be considered a “swivel-eyed loon” (which I am not actually) than an obedient servant of the mainstream media and establishment that accepts everything I am told by them as ‘gospel truth’.
If you think this is ‘drivel’ then fair’s fair, that’s your opinion and you are indeed entitled to it. But when it comes to freedom of speech and freedom of expression, people are entitled also to offer differing opinions and viewpoints.
Mike,
Maybe you need to open your eyes to what has been going on for several years. Much of it is passed off as incompetence yet the perpetrators are usually well educated people.
History tells us that politicians are often guilty of truly evil acts so why should we not question May’s jumping to conclusions on a subject such as this?
Bonkers. Utterly bonkers. Mr Shrimpton’s obsession with this non-existent German Secret Service department – he’s been convicted and jailed for this before FFS !! — and the instant-reaction and belief by the majority of commentators that its true is yet another example of why UKIP is looking more and more like a doomed party . Madness.
Mr Bav Shrimpton is only expressing his personal opinion, and I look forward to reading yours too.
Furthermore, he is not a UKIP spokespersons to my knowledge.
Indeed he isn’t, he’s not even a member of UKIP. But AFAIK, it’s not yet forbidden to publish dissenting voices in UKIP Daily. As we keep telling readers: UKIP Daily is made by members for members. I’ve alway assumed that Kippers are not=snowflakes and that they’d rather debate controversial issues than being force-fed ‘thought pieces’ in a safe-space echo chamber … but what do I know …
You obviously haven’t studied the with respect musical comedy proceedings at Southern Crown Court, “Mr Bav”, whoever you are! Neither count even mentioned the DVD. The charges were ludicrous and the jury was tampered with, as colleagues in the Intelligence Community well know, MI5 now have the transcript and recording of MOD’s phone call to me, which completely exonerate me. The jury of course never heard the recording as MOD took care to destroy it. The learned trial judge suppressed evidence of the existence of the DVD, and an expert’s report supporting me, from the jury. As I suspect you well know, given your with respect over the top response, both the DVD and its London operation, GO2, exist. If you haven’t read my book Spyhunter it’s high time you did! You might also take care to do some basic fact-checking in future, before making a fool of yourself, with respect, by misrepresenting the criminal proceedings against me. Both convictions were obtained as the result destroying material evidence and each is still under challenge.
Apologies – Southern should be Southwark, of course!
The amazing thing, Michael, was that anyone with any critical thinking ability believed any of this. So many whys, never answered. Why would the Russians poison the Skripals, especially now? Why would Assad gas his own people, especially now? Far more easy to identify those who would have something to gain from (so very badly) staging these false flags.
I think the people we should be concerned about are the Skripals themselves, especially the daughter. Remember how we were subjected to poor Mr. Litvinyenko (sorry about phonetic spelling) fading and dying all over MSM? In this case – nothing. I did hear that Julia had left a fiancé back in Russia and yet she doesn’t apparently want to see either him or her cousin. I also heard that the Skripals may be given ‘a new identity’ in America (until the inevitable car crash puts an end to their happy new life?). Journalists were outside Mark Meechan’s door before the Police turned up – yet not one has tried to track down or interview the fragrant Julia?
On the plus side, we needn’t worry because Newsnight is on the ‘fake news’ case. Last night’s comedy gold included such predictable gems as ‘The Russians fixed Brexit’ and ‘something happened in Douma, we’re just not sure exactly what’ but Assad is a very bad man – rounded off by a guest appearance from Alistair Campbell who assured the audience that he had never ever lied, not even once, and Evan Davies telling us that if we wanted to avoid Fake News we should stick to reading…The Guardian!
I’m not an expert (thank goodness!) but it didn’t take me long to smell a big fat very smelly rat! We want to keep blaming others for doing whatever so we can pretend to be defending something (that changes weekly) . We can’t keep our nose out of others business whilst we cannot keep our minds on our country and its needs. We also needed a distraction from Brexit negatiations and needed to cry (wolf) for help from EU countries as we need to brain wash us Brexiteers that we cannot live without the EU who have rushed to our aid (RE pretend nerve agent attack). Shame our Government, Remainders etc can’t get it into their thick heads that we are not the stupid thicko ones here!
I’m not going to comment about Douma – international fishiness a strong probability. However I will still cast doubt on the notion that the Skripals were poisoned by our lot, I just don’t buy that. Was Putin involved directly? Is he involved in all the other suspected murders of the more bog standard assassination technique of strangling made to look like suicide? My personal jury is out, especially on the latter, more likely Russian mafia feuds.
I have just seen a report that a chap who used to make this stuff in Russia has been run over – shades of the old runaway truck trick. He claimed the compound used was very stable & might even have been stuff he synthesised. Fake news???? Well Putin has form in spades and not just among Russian diaspora in the UK; the KGB mindset has never been broken. Of course the dark state could exploit that too but just saying….
“However I will still cast doubt on the notion that the Skripals were poisoned by our lot, I just don’t buy that.”
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, its that nothing surprises me any more.
The “narrative” has always tried to keep it’s ‘stories’ as simple as possible, there are ‘good guys’ and there are ‘bad guys’. We’ve always just assumed that being British, and part of the ‘West’, we are the ‘good guys’, and everyone else, whether its Russians, Chinese, Middle-Eastern etc are the “bad guys”. We never even consider the possibility that we, or our own Government at least, are actually ‘bad guys’, because that’s not how the story goes according to the ‘official narrative’ pushed by our governments and media.
Thankfully, the internet and social media allows us access to other news sources beyond our own mainstream media, and it is interesting to read other opinions and accounts of events that happened. It’s also interesting when you have an outlet like RT being criticised by the BBC for being a ‘state-sponsored propaganda channel’ when the BBC is also exactly that.
I’m not pro-Russia by any means, but after reading various takes on this stories from different perspectives, I’m more inclined to believe that our own government had a hand in the ‘Salisbury Incident’ in the hope of implicating Russia. Like I started with, nothing surprises me any more!
Oh Mr Shrimpton please share this with the PM. It is incredible but truly believable and, personally, I was never taken in by the whole debacle.
I believe very little what the Russians say but the real tragedy is that the same distrust is increasingly applying to my own government.
Interesting thought, but what outcome was whoever staged this operation aiming at?
The return of the Elgin marbles (ECB) . Or World peace ( JC ). Petrol Rationing( Donahue ) etc etc.
What would you guess?
I think the globalists, of which Shariza May is one of them, are just desperate to start a major war anywhere they can. People are starting to wake up to the globalists and the world financial system is starting to shake on the sandy foundations on which it was built since the 2008 financial crisis.
War is a convenient distraction, allowing governments to print even more worthless Fiat Currencies, allows certain people to make obscene wealth from weapons sales and fulfills the globalist plan for population reduction.
Michael says rthat Shariza isn’t a war criminal, bur whether she is or not or just an spineless pandering imbecile is irrelevent, she’s a compleste disaster and needs to go.
Jacob Rees-Mogg for PM: yes please!
Flyer Do you really think he could be allowed to become the leader of the Conservative Party unless he agrees to the demands of the sponsors of the Tory party which are not, I suspect agreeable to you and I?
Jake – Well yes, there is that of course.
It is a “weapon of mass distraction” of course, to occupy the attention of us plebs while Theresa the Appeaser sells us out to the Eurofascists in Brussels.
Absolutely, a distraction was needed and, just in case one failed, she had two.
This has the ring of truth. A throw away idea taken up by an amateur, carried out by incompetents, and blamed on a decidedly odd PM, who nobody dare act against for fear of unimaginable consequencs . ( Corbyn, Hammond )