Europe urgently needs to re-establish access to Russian oil and gas. Gas prices are high – as all UK energy consumers know – and German gas storage is at a record low for September. Gulf production is degraded, supplies are cut off and its long-term strategic stability undermined.
German manufacturing already suffered a 9.5% production loss from 2022 to 2026 following the Russian gas shutdown, with the loss in energy-intensive manufacturing (inc petrochemicals, chemicals, metals, glass/ceramics/stone, paper, mineral oil etc.) at 15.2%.
Western Europe can regain access to Russian hydrocarbons either by accepting a negotiated peace in Ukraine, or by attempting regime change in Russia. The political class in Europe have evidently decided to go all out for regime change.
It would of course be much easier, and much safer, to settle the Ukrainian conflict. We can identify the following reasons the European political “elite” is not taking that path:
- Loss of face and political capital by in situ leaders who have gone all in for conflict with Russia – von der Leyen, Kallas, Merz, Rutte, Stubb etc
- Generational family and national hatred of Russia by those wanting to reverse World War II in Eastern Europe – von der Leyen, Kallas, Merz, Stubb etc
- Deep common interests between the political personnel and the military-industrial complex
Note that none of these motives has anything to do with the welfare of their people, and still less “democracy.” I find it very hard to think of any occasion when a drive towards war had such little foundation.
Consider this. The United Kingdom, like many Western countries, is openly supplying the Ukraine with long-range missiles, manufacturing plans for long-range missiles, and personnel to service them, in the full knowledge that Ukraine is using those missiles in an attempt to devastate civilian infrastructure deep within Russia, killing many Russian civilians in the process.
Yet we are repeatedly told by both politicians and the media that Russia is the threat to the UK, when very plainly it is the opposite which is the truth. Until this year, Russia had in three hundred years of history never had any plans to invade or occupy the UK – while the UK invaded Russia in 1854 and 1917. I presume the Russians are currently working on defensive plans against the UK, given the disgraceful warmongering of our government.
The notion that the boundaries of a Ukrainian state, which had never existed in history until 1991, are so sacrosanct they cannot be adjusted to avoid World War III, is mad. They were only ever internal Soviet boundaries. Ukrainian is a new nationality, but the Ukrainians are entitled to a state if they wish one. What they are not entitled to do is insist on the old Soviet boundary, when they have:
- closed Russian schools, universities, bookshops, theatres, cinemas, libraries, kindergartens, banks and churches
- banned the Socialist Party, Communist Party, Left Party, eleven other parties and eight trade unions
- continued the systematic glorification of Nazi and genocidal figures from Ukraine’s past – alienating Poland in the process.
The notion that nuclear war should be fought over who is Mayor of Lugansk has so little public support that Russophobia is being assiduously stoked by Western governments and the EU itself. The latest episode is the extraordinarily thin gruel of the “Leipzig airport attack” story. Yesterday we had the most incredible release of coordinated statements by Western European leaders all telling us that the evidence is plain of a “hybrid attack” by Russia.
Every single one of them uses the same expression 'hybrid attack'.
Why? pic.twitter.com/pHJE2gJ2iZ
— John Laughland (@john_laughland) September 2, 2026
All accompanied by no evidence whatsoever.
The German state of course has history with this sort of false flag. On the night of 31 August/1 September 1939 it staged false flag attacks by Polish forces on the German border post at Gliwice (Gleiwitz), and a couple of other locations. Murdered corpses of political prisoners were dressed in Polish uniforms and spread around. A radio broadcast was transmitted in Polish. This “attack” was the justification for the German invasion of Poland the next day.
Now the “Russian attack” on Leipzig Halle airport was on 4 August, and yet the carefully coordinated attribution to Russia, with identical statements from all western European powers, was not launched until 1 September. I have seen it suggested that this was deliberately on the anniversary of Gliwice. That seems to me unlikely, and yet not to have at least avoided the date of perhaps the most famous false flag in history – by the same state – is very curious, when the date was so obviously voluntary for an attack that occurred four weeks before.
If you reject the warmongers’ logic for a moment, the actual scandal is that there were Ukrainian aircraft in Leipzig stacked with German weapons to kill Russians, not that an amateur toy drone allegedly tried to stop them.
To be told that this is a Russian attack by precisely the same set of goons who lied to us that it was Russia that blew up the Nord Stream gas pipeline, is testing not just the gullibility of the public, but its patience.
In the UK the purveyors of Russophobia – including government ministers – fall back repeatedly on the farcical “Russian novichok on Salisbury” story to explain why we should prepare for war with Russia.
Nobody has ever even pretended to answer the dissection of the official line I published in my article Pure – Ten Points I Just Don’t Believe. I am now able to add a further point I was not aware of at the time, thanks to Tim Norman and his coverage of the Sturgess Inquiry. The use of a judicial inquiry to determine official cause of death, rather than a coroner’s court which exists for that specific purpose, is almost always a sign of a government cover-up – see also the Hutton Inquiry and the murder of David Kelly.
But one thing the inquiry did receive was the toxicology report on Dawn Sturgess from the NHS central toxicology lab in Birmingham. This is what it found in Dawn Sturgess’ blood.
It is worth noting that fentanyl was also found, but this was removed from this list presented to the inquiry as she had been given fentanyl in hospital. That does not, of course, mean there was, or was not, already fentanyl in her bloodstream. But what you do have for sure is cocaine, plus a synthetic opioid given by the NHS to heroin addicts, plus gin and tonic, plus two different antidepressants, plus sleeping tablets.
What you don’t have is novichok. The idea that the NHS central toxicology lab cannot detect organophosphate poisoning, or was not testing for it in the blood of someone in Salisbury when the entire media was already screaming novichok, is arrant nonsense.
Only the Ministry of Defence laboratory at Porton Down claimed to find novichok – and controlled the samples which the OPCW (an equally corrupt institution) got.
Dawn Sturgess was a frail, known long-term drug addict. The combination in her bloodstream could kill anybody – of course depending on the quantities. The astonishing thing is that the pathologist at the inquiry stated he had been given no quantities or concentrations for these substances. He was therefore in no position to say they did not kill her.
This is incredible. There is no such thing as a toxicology report which does not quantify concentrations. Otherwise the information is clinically meaningless. I have spoken with three doctors, two nurses and a senior NHS administrator. All say it is impossible the toxicology report came without quantification. I assume the pathologist was not lying; so they must have been deliberately deleted. Only government can do that, and the obvious motive is to cover up the actual cause of death.
Let us face it: from that list of substances in her blood the actual cause of death is extremely obvious.
The great structural weakness of the inquiry was that nobody had the job of scepticism about the official story. The only non-governmental representative was Michael Mansfield, who represented Dawn Sturgess’ family, and his brief was to argue that Dawn Sturgess was not a drug addict. That – I am sorry to say, completely untrue – version of events fitted the story which both the government and Sturgess’s family wished to be put forward.
I am genuinely upset to have to relate unpleasant things about a dead woman who was a victim of circumstance in her life, in order to tell the truth, but you don’t get cocaine and buprenorphine in your blood by accident. We therefore had the farce of the police apologising at the inquiry for having called Dawn Sturgess a drug addict.
So we have alleged novichok in Salisbury which killed nobody, and an explosive drone, or possibly two, in Leipzig which did not explode. To counter this massive threat, we need to push an entire continent to nuclear war. As a first step, we need to cut health and social spending to give trillions more to arms manufacturers, and prepare our children for conscription, to die on the battlefield.
Forgive me if I am not convinced.
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Burnham seems to be even more intent in pushing it over the edge with Russia than Starmer was.
The day he became PM he told NATO Secretary-General Rutte that his appointment of John Healey as Chancellor of the Excheqher was ‘a signal of intent’.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-call-with-nato-secretary-general-mark-rutte-20-july-2026
Healey had resigned as Defence Secretary because he thought Sir Keir was too soft on militarism, committing too much money to public services rather than arms.
John was a key enabler of the Gaza Genocide and was advised as Defence Secretary by the very wildest of British intelligence’s Russophobe chickenhawks, Chris Donnelly and Paul Mason.
https://thegrayzone.com/2026/07/24/leaks-starmer-healey-advised-russia-war/
What is Andy’s intent if he’s assuring NATO that John’s appointment as Chancellor is a ‘signal’ of it?
Drone nonsense indeed – now apparently two-Russian passports have been found on the scene as well, a bit like the 9/11 passport that survived, or the two supposed “perps” who attacked the Charlie Hedo workplace, who left their passports in their car for all to see.
AfD in Germany aims for a breakthrough in Saxony-Anhalt, it might be too little and too late to have any impact on this madness.
Did they also find a balalaika nearby?
Ha! aye, and a half-consumed carton of borscht beside a voodoo babooshka doll in the form of Vd Leyen with needles stuck in it
Yuri K/ Robert.
You both know the narrative of Russia done it – and if its not Russia – then was Iran that done it.
Now we even have Norway seizing a Russian ship near the Svalbard – because Ukraine asked them to.
Apparently there’s a pair of boots with snow on….
There have also been a few Ukrainians, possibly with more than one passport, who have been done for corruption, i.e: money for the protection of power plants and yet the West keeps sending more, without even blinking.
Take the money out of the NHS or schools or infrastructure and then give it to thieves, who care nothing for their own people.
This leniency is happening at the same time people ,holding pieces of paper with words on, are being arrested for being ‘terrorists’, and as your article Judges , Juries and Fascism showed, judged with ‘ hate and fury’, as with Plaschkes
Thankyou again for this detailed report.
Of course the Sturgess report would have been over sooner but the unimpeachable Baroness Hallett who would certainly have ruled fairly and wisely, proved too valuable and was called away to preside over the Covid inquiry.
On Ukraine and Loss of face. A lot depends on how many Nato Proxy Ukrainians have been killed. There is a minimum estimate by the pro-Kiev UA losses of around 200k. There are other estimates that go from 1.5 to 2 million.
An open discussion of a 2 millon number when the US is covering up a few hundred is not conceivable.
But you can’t attempt reconstruction without counting the survivors.
Very good report.
It’s jolly sporting of us to give Russia a ten year heads-up that we intend to have a war with them. I’ve yet to see how this is supposed to be accomplished – a ground invasion by British Tommies? An air invasion? Or was the plan always to sit here, waiting for them to attack? All very unclear.
The problem with all this talk is the sense of inevitability to which this gives rise. It was the same inevitability – together with weak, ineffectual European leaders – that allowed the first world war to establish itself.
Equally strange how Russia would open up its own war against Germany, with such a weak and strange attack as sending a solitary drone.
The constant talk of pitching our ‘defence’ spending as a percentage of GDP is ludicrous. Why a percentage, when we never declare other national needs to be allocated a set percentage? Why are there no demands for proper costing, and explaining how it is to be paid for? Not a peep from the MSM or leaders of the main parties. It’s all good, and the more the better.
Contrast this with calls for spending on, say, housing. “Are taxes going up to pay for this Prime Minister? Where’s the money coming from? What cuts are you planning?” etc.
And when GDP rises and falls, that percentage stays the same – so we take on more squaddies or let them go according to each quarterly report? Utter silliness.
In the meantime, we escalate, escalate, escalate. We are at war with Russia but haven’t declared it. Yet if Russia strikes back, it will be called unprovoked aggression. Which requires the harshest response.
Can you imagine if Russia had supplied, say, Iraq or Argentina weapons not only to defend themselves, but to attack the UK or America itself?
(a) The Democratic Reality of Ukraine
1. International Law Matters: Ukraine’s borders are legally recognized under the UN Charter. Suggesting borders should be rewritten to appease an invader undermines global stability.
2. Defense vs. Terror: There is a vast moral difference between Russia deliberately bombing Ukrainian civilian apartments and grids for over four years, and Ukraine striking Russian military airfields and fuel depots to stop those attacks.
3. The Cost of Appeasement: Trading a sovereign nation’s freedom for energy comfort is a strategic trap. Relying on autocracies for vital resources gives them veto power over democratic societies, funding their military machine and guaranteeing larger conflicts later.
(b) The Hard Science of Pathology and Toxicology
1. Evidence, Not Agendas: In forensic pathology, conclusions rely on strict, peer-reviewed data, not political theater.
2. Identification is Objective: Identifying fourth-generation nerve agents involves no guesswork. Advanced laboratory tests break down compounds into unique chemical “fingerprints.” Furthermore, Novichok leaves a specific, permanent mark in the victim’s blood that cannot be faked or duplicated by other toxins.
3. Blind Global Testing: To guarantee total neutrality, samples are split and sent to multiple independent international labs certified by the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons). These facilities conduct blind tests—they do not know the source or origin of the samples. A chemical weapon is only verified when multiple global labs independently reach identical conclusions.
4. Why Victims Survive: Survival doesn’t mean a poison was fake. If a nerve agent touches the skin, it can take hours to absorb. Survival is simply a testament to the rapid, world-class medical interventions and advanced antidotes delivered by medical professionals.
M.J.
September 3, 2026 at 18:16
Very well said M.J.
Sad to say that Craig (planning a self-funded trip to Russia shortly) has finally jumped the shark.
The victim of aggression must cease resistance so that Germany can regain access to cheaper gas on Russia’s terms.
Sounds like a plan.
To surrender Ukraine to the Russkiy military just as the latter is unraveling would be an historic mistake.
Like surrendering Czechoslovakia to the Wehrmacht..
And equally despicable.
And equally doomed to later betrayal.
Nobody surrendered Czechoslovakia to Wehrmacht.
Yuri K
September 4, 2026 at 06:00
“Nobody surrendered Czechoslovakia to Wehrmacht.” (sic)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement
JK redux
September 4, 2026 at 08:21
Odd how many posters don’t see the obvious analogies between Hitler’s attempted destruction of Czechoslovakia and Putin’s attempts to destroy Ukraine as a sovereign independent state.
“Odd how many posters don’t see the obvious analogies between Hitler’s attempted destruction of Czechoslovakia and Putin’s attempts to destroy Ukraine as a sovereign independent state.”
It’s notoriously difficult to see something that isn’t there.
Bayard
September 4, 2026 at 08:48
That’s a very weak attempted rebuttal Bayard.
Simply to deny the analogy is not a demonstration that the analogy fails.
I could detail the correspondences but I expect that you are aware of them but “are in a river in Egypt” and thus immune to argument?
Do you really believe I haven’t read this?
And there is no analogy between ” Hitler’s attempted destruction of Czechoslovakia and Putin’s attempts to destroy Ukraine as a sovereign independent state.” Czechoslovakia was disbanded after Slovakia declared independece, and only after this Hitler saw an opportunity to take over Czechia. There is a conspiracy theory that Hitler planned this takeover from the start but there is no evidence to support such claims.
As for Putin, his wish to sign the deal in the Minsk/Istanbul talks in the 2022 proves that he had no plans to destroy Ukraine as a political entity. It was Zelensky who bailed out of the talks, not Putin.
“Simply to deny the analogy is not a demonstration that the analogy fails.”
Yes it is, if there is no analogy, there is no analogy to fail or not. Analogies are not facts, they are theories. As Sherlock Holmes put it “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” You have started with the theory that there is an analogy. This is founded on other theories, not on the facts, which are cherry-picked to suit the theory. There is not one shred of evidence that Hitler would not have invaded Poland if Britain and France had kicked up more of a fuss about him invading a part of Czechoslovakia which had been Germany twenty years previously. You are confusing correlation with causality.
“Like surrendering Czechoslovakia to the Wehrmacht.”
Why was that a mistake? Out of all the countries between Germany and Russia, Czechoslovakia was the only one not ravaged by WWII. (Please don’t reply with some bollox about, “if we hadn’t handed Czechoslovakia to Hitler, he wouldn’t have gone on to invade Poland and start WWII, thus displaying a total ignorance of a) what actually happened, b) what international politics involves and c) the difference between coincidence and causality.)
Bayard
September 4, 2026 at 08:47
“Czechoslovakia was the only one not ravaged by WWII. ”
That’s an extraordinary claim, Bayard.
The Theresienstadt ghetto, the Lidice massacre, the theft of Czechoslovakia’s gold reserves, the seizure of Czechoslovakia’s armament production to be directed at the USSR and the West, ….
The physical material (buildings etc) wasn’t “ravaged” as it was seized unopposed by the Nazis due to the Munich betrayal.
The people, on the other hand, were “ravaged” by the Nazi barbarians.
Stop this victimization of the bloody Czechs, will ya? They give up their country without a single shot, then worked to support Wehrmacht throughout the war. They refused to join the uprising in Slovakia in the Autumn of 1944 but finally demonstrated their “bravery” by killing thousands of German civilians once the Soviets and the Americans liberated them. They are the most disgusting nation in Europe.
Yuri K
September 4, 2026 at 13:34
That’s a new one on me.
A country is betrayed by its “friends” and occupied by its neighbour. And not a victim?
Aye right..
You’d be a Russkiy yourself then Yuri?
(Russians of course the Most Oppressed People Ever – MOPE – almost always by their own rulers.)
They did not fire a shot to save themselves, why would anyone die for them?
Romancing East European began after they started joining EU and NATO. In reality, a large fraction of them were nazi collaborators.
“The Theresienstadt ghetto, the Lidice massacre, the theft of Czechoslovakia’s gold reserves, the seizure of Czechoslovakia’s armament production to be directed at the USSR and the West, ….”
Come on, that’s hardly “ravaging”, compared to Poland and everywhere to the east.
“The physical material (buildings etc) wasn’t “ravaged” as it was seized unopposed by the Nazis due to the Munich betrayal.”
And that’s nothing, is it? If Ireland had joined in WWII and all its cities and large towns had been bombed flat, do you think the Irish would have shrugged it off with “known worse”?
Who, precisely, was “betrayed”? Not the Czechs, who would have suffered far worse if Britain had encouraged them to fight, just like Britain encouraged Ukraine to fight: that has worked out so well for Ukraine, hasn’t it? Britain’s support didn’t help the Finns win the Winter War, why should it have done anything for the Czechs, up against a much more powerful Germany. Anyway, the Czechs didn’t want to fight, just like Ireland didn’t later in WWII.
Also Denmark and Sweden.
The Munich Agreement allowed Germany to take over the largely German speaking Sudetenland, Hitler later broke that agreement by taking the whole country. Somewhere between 294,000 to 320,000 Czechs and Slovakians were slaughtered during the Nazi occupation, many more were forced into unpaid labour and starvation rations, industrial output was stolen to equip Germany’s armed forces. If that doesn’t count as ‘ravaged’ I don’t know what does.
Most of those killed were the Jews, 270,000 to 277,000. Other losses are estimated to be only around 75,000-90,000, including about 4,000 Slovaks KIA on the Eastern Front. Overall population loss was just about 2.3-2.4%. Not much compared with Poland (17.2%), USSR (14.2%) and Yugoslavia (11.0%).
I do not know if the numbers also include the Sudetten Germans.
“If that doesn’t count as ‘ravaged’ I don’t know what does.”
It doesn’t. What happened to Poland, western Russia and the countries in between counts as “ravaged”. I said Czechoslovakia “wasn’t ravaged”. I didn’t say the Czechs got off scot free.
” International Law Matters”
Not to Trump it doesn’t.
“Suggesting borders should be rewritten to appease an invader undermines global stability.”
Ahem, Kosovo, ahem, also almost every country in West Asia, whose borders were rewritten by the invading British.
“2. Defense vs. Terror: There is a vast moral difference between Russia deliberately bombing Ukrainian civilian apartments and grids for over four years, and Ukraine striking Russian military airfields and fuel depots to stop those attacks.”
Well there would be if they had, but they didn’t, so there isn’t. When Russia bombs a military installation, which the Ukranians have placed in a civilian area, the civilians are the target and the military installation is collateral damage. When Ukraine destroys a civilian passenger train nowhere near any military installation, the railway, which could be used to transport military personnel and materiel, is the target and the civilians are collateral damage.
“3. The Cost of Appeasement: Trading a sovereign nation’s freedom for energy comfort is a strategic trap. Relying on autocracies for vital resources gives them veto power over democratic societies, funding their military machine and guaranteeing larger conflicts later.”
Russia has elections, Ukraine doesn’t. Russia has opposition parties, Ukraine has closed them all down. Which, pray, is the autocracy and which is the democracy? However your second sentence is undoubtably true, as all those who rely on the US for their energy are in the process of finding out.
“1. Evidence, Not Agendas: In forensic pathology, conclusions rely on strict, peer-reviewed data, not political theater.”
Not in Britain, it seems.
2. Identification is Objective: Identifying fourth-generation nerve agents involves no guesswork. Advanced laboratory tests break down compounds into unique chemical “fingerprints.” Furthermore, Novichok leaves a specific, permanent mark in the victim’s blood that cannot be faked or duplicated by other toxins.
No it doesn’t, because there is no such thing as “Novichok”. The only evidence for its existence comes from the government, an organisation with an unbroken record of lying to the people of Britain. If “Novichok” “leaves a specific, permanent mark in the victim’s blood that cannot be faked or duplicated by other toxins.”, why did the independent testing laboratory the “samples” were sent to find it was identical to VX and why was it not found in Dawn Sturgess’s blood?
“3. Blind Global Testing: To guarantee total neutrality, samples are split and sent to multiple independent international labs certified by the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons). These facilities conduct blind tests—they do not know the source or origin of the samples. A chemical weapon is only verified when multiple global labs independently reach identical conclusions.”
Which they didn’t with “Novichok”. Only one lab was sent the sample and, at first, said it was VX, so HMG had to come up with some bollox about the samples being spiked.
“4. Why Victims Survive: Survival doesn’t mean a poison was fake.”
But it does mean that it is not 100% fatal, or in the case of “Novichok”, it means that it is 0% fatal, so far. So yes it is a poison, but then so is alcohol and millions of people survive poisoning by that every day.
Russia has elections,
In name only.
Ukraine doesn’t.
In line with its constitution. The UK suspended elections for 8 years during WW1 and 10 in WW2.
Russia has opposition parties,
Again in name only.
Ukraine has closed them all down.
Wrong. Ukraine has outlawed 11 of 349 registered political parties because of their links to Russia. What do you think would happen to a pro-Ukraine party in Russia?
“In name only.”
Yeah, right. The Russian elections are in name only because the Russians don’t have democracy and they don’t have democracy because their elections are in name only. Is that how it goes?
“In line with its constitution. The UK suspended elections for 8 years during WW1 and 10 in WW2.”
Why does that make it the right thing to do? Compared to the colossal and evil mistake of going to war when they didn’t have to in the first place, not holding elections is/was a minor sin, but it is/was still a sin.
“Ukraine has outlawed 11 of 349 registered political parties because of their links to Russia.”
What you are saying is that Ukraine has shut down all the parties that oppose its stance on Russia, which rather suggests that the rest are opposition in name only in that if they came to power, they would carry on exactly the same policies, give or take a few cosmetic tweaks, as the party the replace. Anyway why is being pro-Russia bad and being pro-US, also another foreign power that seeks influence and control over Ukraine and fomented a coup which drove out a democratically elected government good? (and before you come up with some guff about a “brutal unprovoked invasion”, these parties existed before 2022.)
“What do you think would happen to a pro-Ukraine party in Russia?”
Why should I speculate? Just tell me how many pro-Ukraine parties Russia has shut down.
There is nothing like this in the Constitution of Ukraine, here is the full text: https://rm.coe.int/constitution-of-ukraine/168071f58b
The suspension of elections in Ukraine is not based on the Constitution; it is based on the Law 389-VIII adopted on May 12, 2015. However, is this law itself constitutional? We do not know the answer because Zelensky disbanded the Constitutional Court of Ukraine.
You demonstrated again your “opinionated ignorance”, Pears.
Ukraine was invaded in 2014 by the Septics.
(a)
(1) If you do not respect the rights of people within the borders, do not expect your borders to be respected.
(2) There is no single bit of evidence of Russia deliberately bombing apartment buildings in Ukraine.
(3) Buying stuff is not “trading freedom”. You pay money, you get the stuff. The seller of the stuff gets your money, not your freedom.
(b)
(1) ???
(2) OK, so where is this “mark”?
(3) OK, so where are these data?
(4) Maybe yes, maybe no.
You are well advanced in using google search and copypasting but this did not help you.
We all know, as does the rent-a-troll gang, that Ukraine, as does Israel, locates military facilities in civilian areas, such as housing complexes and shopping malls. This is classified as a war crime because it puts civilians in danger. Not that zionist nazis and their supporters give a damn.
Even Zelensky admitted this, twice already, and pretended he did not know.
“1. International Law Matters: Ukraine’s borders are legally recognized under the UN Charter. Suggesting borders should be rewritten to appease an invader undermines global stability.”
If a principle is to have any value, then it must be true for all time. If we accept that other countries in a more powerful position shouldn’t alter the borders of sovereign nations, then Stalin’s and Krushchev’s alterations of Ukraine’s borders should be reversed and parts of western Ukraine should be returned to Poland, south-western Ukraine to Hungary, southern Ukraine to Romania and Crimea, which was transferred within living memory without the people in either Crimea or Ukraine being consulted, to Russia. The latter has now been done and the inhabitants of Crimea seem very happy with it. Would you not agree that the other regions should at least be consulted about the option of following suit?
Re: ‘The idea that the NHS central toxicology lab cannot detect organo-phosphate poisoning, or was not testing for it in the blood of someone in Salisbury when the entire media was already screaming novichok, is arrant nonsense.’
It’s not nonsense, arrant or otherwise. The Birmingham lab almost certainly wouldn’t have had the mass spec fragmentation patterns for any of the Novichoks in any of its libraries because until 2018 nobody had been poisoned by a Novichok agent in the UK, therefore it couldn’t claim to have definitively found any in the samples. In any event, after more than 24 hours in the blood, the Novichok could easily have been degraded to undetectable levels by enzymes and/or hydrolyzed by hydroxide ions in the alkaline environment. Importantly, what the lab did find, however, was that the levels of active acetylcholinesterase in Dawn’s blood were substantially reduced, indicative of nerve agent poisoning.
Re: ‘Dawn Sturgess was a frail, known long term drug addict. The combination in her bloodstream could kill anybody – of course depending on the quantities. ‘
Dawn may have had issues with alcohol, but there’s no evidence that she was a drug addict. Millions of people in Britain take cocaine every week. It doesn’t necessarily make them addicts, any more than having a couple drinks on a Friday night makes someone an alcoholic. Anything can kill anybody in sufficient quantities – including water. However, if usually not very effective, modern pharmaceuticals are designed to be as safe as possible, because Big Pharma doesn’t want to potentially lose billions in class-action lawsuits.
Re: ‘I am genuinely upset to have to tell unpleasant things about a dead woman who was a victim of circumstance in her life, in order to say the truth, but you don’t get cocaine and buprenorphine in your blood by accident. We therefore had the farce of the Police apologising at the Inquiry for having called Dawn Sturgess a drug addict.’
Whilst not necessarily an addict herself, Dawn did hang around with drug addicts – including her boyfriend Charlie Rowley – and any one of them could have surreptitiously slipped drugs in her food or drink – to cheer her up perhaps. Anyone who thinks that drug addicts wouldn’t do such things clearly hasn’t spent much time with them. There’s nothing farcical about the police apologising to a grieving family when they get things wrong.
In fact, there’s a good deal of evidence that Dawn Sturgess was killed by a nerve agent, most probably a Novichok – and that the Skripals and Nick Bailey were poisoned by one. Of course, the Novichok doesn’t have to have come from Russia. Once again, anyone who wants to get a good idea of what really went on in Salisbury & Amesbury in 2018 could do worse than read this:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/the-salisbury-poisonings-episode-was-all-staged/page/6/#post-103404
You’re very welcome.
“In fact, there’s a good deal of evidence that Dawn Sturgess was killed by a nerve agent, ”
Like what?
Thanks for your reply Bayard.
Like:
– Multiple presentations entirely consistent with nerve agent poisoning reported by several paramedics and doctors at Salisbury District Hospital who attended to her in their witness statements, testimonies to the Inquiry, and in her medical notes. e.g. pinprick pupils, profuse salivation, profuse sweating, uncontrolled defecation, very low heart rate after circulation was re-established with CPR and adrenaline (treatable with atropine).
– Very low levels of active acetylcholinesterase in her blood reported by the lab in Birmingham.
– Presence of the nerve agent Novichok A-234 (or a very similar analogue with a different leaving group) in the active site of her acetylcholinesterase, detected using advanced mass spec techniques as reported by Porton Down, as well as OPCW labs in Europe.
– Traces of A-234 reported found on her skin.
– Perfume bottle containing nearly pure A-234 as reported by Porton Down found in her flat, which Charlie Rowley claims he found in a bin, and then opened and gave to her shortly before she collapsed in his flat.
Utter bollocks. They sealed off her flat and searched it for a vial of liquid for 11 days, for the first ten of which they failed to find a bottle of perfume sitting on the kitchen counter. Because of course it wasn’t there, it was planted eventually.
I’m not sure whether to thank you for that reply Boss.
Anyway, to address your points:
1) Counter Terrorism Police had no idea what they were looking for – none of them are Lt Columbo. They initally assumed (quite reasonably) that the Novichok came from an item that Dawn and/or Charlie had touched recently, such as the discarded drinks bottles, cans, cigarette butts etc and focused their attention on those, and no doubt also the used syringes, stericups etc scattered all around his flat. The perfume bottle was right at the back of the kitchen work surface behind stacks of Charlie’s dirty washing-up, and if they saw it earlier they could have reasonably assumed that neither Dawn or Charlie had touched it recently.
2) They only started their search on Weds 4th or Thurs 5th July (can’t be arsed trawling back through the Inquiry to find the exact date), after the positive test for Novichok in Dawn’s blood came back. Whether any or them were religious or not, I doubt whether they’ll have worked on Sunday 8th. That brings your 11 days down to seven. Porton Down doesn’t have unlimited resources. It will only have been able to analyse a few items per day.
3) One question for you: How does the police waiting seven days before ‘finding’ a planted perfume bottle – rather than say two – enhance the ‘Ruskies-must-have-dun-it’ narrative they were supposedly trying to create?
If it was planted why did whoever did it take 11 days?
“If it was planted why did whoever did it take 11 days?”
Well, duh, because it was 10 days before the decision was made to plant the evidence. It really doesn’t take 11 days to find something in full view on the kitchen counter.
“– Traces of A-234 reported found on her skin.”
Tell me, do you believe what the authorities tell you because you think that they are incapable of lying to you, or do you believe it because it’s what you want to hear?
Thanks for your reply Bayard. You asked for evidence, I provided it. Of course I don’t believe the authorities are incapable of lying – but I’d say that if Dawn wasn’t poisoned with nerve agent, a lot of people must be lying on their behalf. Again, such a nerve agent doesn’t have to have come from Russia.
“– but I’d say that if Dawn wasn’t poisoned with nerve agent, a lot of people must be lying on their behalf.”
Why is that so hard to believe? I was about 14 when I discovered that not only do people lie for their own advantage, but some people lie for fun. Unless you have some ability, denied to us ordinary mortals, to tell whether what you are reading is the truth or not in the absence of corroborating evidence that you know to be true (see question above), if you can’t trust everything someone or some organisation says, you can’t trust anything.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. I was about 8 when I discovered that people lie for fun – however, they’re much less likely to lie under oath or in witness statements, because there can be serious consequences for doing so. Corroborating evidence that Dawn was killed by a nerve agent comes inter alia from the 5 or 6 witness statements produced by the paramedics and doctors that attended to her all saying very similar things about her presentations. Further evidence is that a couple of the paramedics admit to making errors (e.g. forgetting to charge their defibrillator) which is something that people are unlikely to do if they’re lying as it needlessly shows them in a bad light.
“however, they’re much less likely to lie under oath or in witness statements, because there can be serious consequences for doing so. ”
There are, and always have been, “serious consequences” for committing most crimes and yet we still have criminals, who’d a thunk it? and we still had them when those “”serious consequences” mostly consisted of dying in a very painful and protracted way. Anyway, when the people who are going to be administering the “serious consequences” are the same people who are telling you to lie, it’s not such a big risk, anyway. Indeed the risk lies all in the other direction, with the “serious consequences” being likely to land on those who refuse to lie and insist on telling the truth.
Do you really believe that,
1) the secret services never tell lies (“for the good of the country”, naturally, but still lying)? and
2) that they never pressure other people into telling lies, or
3) that they sometimes do the above, but in this case they weren’t and you have an innate ability to tell the difference, unlike us ordinary mortals?
Thanks for your reply Bayard. Obviously we still have criminals, but most people in the UK don’t commit serious crimes, such as perjury – in part because they’re worried about the potential consequences if they do. Most people are not like the Alphabetties, who were driven half-mad by power and believed that they were untouchable.
1) Of course I don’t believe that the British secret services never tell lies, and I never said that I did. One thing I do believe about the British secret services though is that they’re capable of putting perfume bottles full of Novichok in bins known to be frequented by the lower socio-economic strata of society, in order that one or more members of those strata may be killed/seriously incapacitated by aforesaid Novichok and this can be blamed on Russia, as you will discover if you read this:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/the-salisbury-poisonings-episode-was-all-staged/page/6/#post-103404
Forgive me if I don’t bother addressing your other questions. Had enough now.
@Re-lapsed Agnostic: Thanks for these comments. One of the few sane voices here.
Just FYI, medications that are sold by the big pharma are hardly ever developed by them. Most drugs these days are invented and developed by universities, startups, and nonprofits, The big pharma simply licenses, produces and markets them. A drug’s efficacy is really not related to who markets it. In reality, if one big pharma won’t buy a good invention, their competitors would, so there’s always this drive among them to have as good a portfolio as it gets.
You also may like to know that drug prices paid by UK and European health systems (but not in the US) are expressly linked to efficacy. There’s a whole branch of economic science called pharmacoeconomics, and these guys spend their lives modelling drug cost-effectiveness in various patient subpopulations. But ultimately it’s a simple equation: the higher the efficacy, the more money the manufacturer will be paid.
Re. safety, no it’s not about the risk of class action suits. As a pharma you simply don’t want your product to be banned by the regulators. Not even mentioning that an obviously unsafe drug won’t be approved by the regulators anyway.
Thanks for your reply and your kind words, Kacper. I was using the term Big Pharma as a catch-all for the pharmaceutical industry in general. However, it’s certainly Big Pharma whose cash will be on the line should the drugs they market turn out to have serious issues. Sometimes the regulators get it wrong – see Vioxx which was licensed by the FDA, marketed for 5 years in the US and then voluntarily withdrawn by Merck, not banned by the FDA. In these days of Meta settling for $17 billion!! over ‘Instagram addiction’, I’m sort of amazed that pharma is still developing chemical entities at all.
Re-lapsed agnostic don’t be so fucking stupid. “It’s not nonsense, arrant or otherwise. The Birmingham lab almost certainly wouldn’t have had the mass spec fragmentation patterns for any of the Novichoks in any of its libraries because until 2018 nobody had been poisoned by a Novichok agent in the UK,”
There had been a rather famous “novichok” poisoning in Salisbury four months previously for which the NHS most definitely had the samples to test against and which it had been geared up to test against as part of a massive ramped up alert. To say the NHS central toxicology lab had no novichok sample four months after the Skripals is so fucking stupid I am surprised your head has not exploded.
Unless of course there never was any novichok in the Skripals…
We do not even know if the Skripals are dead or alive. But whatever the outcome was, IMO they were poisoned by phentanyl, not by nurve gas.
They were poisoned, and killed, by MI6, that’s all you need to know !
Like Yuri, I’m not sure whether the Skripals are dead or alive Stevie, but I’m pretty sure you’re on the right lines with the rest of your comment.
«IMO they were poisoned by phentanyl»
One of the curious aspects of the case was that the poisoning happened during one of the short visits of Yulia which as far as we know was just a random normal person, even if reportedly she had a much higher wealth and standard of living than her official work supported.
My guess is that Sergei was involved in black market drug trades and Yulia was perhaps his courier, and as it often happens to black market traders, they accidentally contaminated themselves with some of their stock, which indeed was most likely phentanyl.
“Unless of course there never was any novichok in the Skripals…”
Or, indeed, any such poison as “Novichok”.
When you’ve finished with the insults, perhaps you can answer these questions:
Why would an NHS lab, staffed largely by jobsworth technicians, keep blood samples that had already been analysed lying around for weeks afterwards – let alone months – doing nothing but taking up space and deteriorating, rather than sending them off for incineration? And why would such a lab have to be ‘geared up’ to deal with a ‘massive ramped up alert’, when the only samples from patients with suspected nerve agent poisoning they’d had to deal with previously were from the Skripals and possibly Nick Bailey? It was hardly the Covid crisis.
If you need actual blood samples to detect a poison, then how does the NHS detect any poison unless it keeps lots of blood samples? I suggest what it keeps are electronic records.
Thanks for replying Bayard – something I note our host is yet to do. Obviously the NHS lab in Birmingham keeps the blood samples until it has analysed them which, provided it’s efficiently run, should take no longer than 24 hrs – and obviously it also keeps electronic records and hopefully backs them up, but there’s no reason that jobsworth technicians are going to go trawling through months-old spectra just to compare them with ones they’ve just run. Even if they did, there could easily be no Novichok peaks due to it having degraded in the blood, or not showing up under the typical MS ionisation conditions.
LA: “… something I note our host is yet to do.”
Keep these snide digs coming – you’re winning, mate, you’re winning!
Maybe CM has better things to do than reply promptly to a bad-faith poster, who’s only purpose here is to be a shit-stirring contrarian?
I’m clearly not winning Glenn, but I’m not here to win*; I’m here to tell the truth, whether you like it or not. Our host clearly has enough time on his hands to call me ‘fucking stupid’ (twice) – but when I make the slightest of digs, you reach for the pearls. In the words of Peter Hitchens: I am not a ****ing contrarian. Agree with them or not, my views are largely consistent, and they’re not ‘bad faith’. That they’re not shared by the majority – on here or elsewhere – is just something that can’t be helped.
* In the UK, where I live, I’d say that currently no one is winning – and they’ll also be no real winners in the likely forthcoming civil war, though some people may be better prepared for that than others.
“but there’s no reason that jobsworth technicians are going to go trawling through months-old spectra just to compare them with ones they’ve just run.”
That is literally their job. To analyse the poisons and compare them to reference samples to find out what they are. That is what identification of anything consists of, looking at the unfamiliar and comparing it with the familiar. Otherwise there would be no point in keeping records in the first place. Also, in these days of computers, “trawling through months-old spectra” takes milliseconds. Do you imagine that NHS records are still kept on card indexes?
“Even if they did, there could easily be no Novichok peaks due to it having degraded in the blood, or not showing up under the typical MS ionisation conditions.”
Ah yes, the Dreyfus handwriting proof (where the handwriting on the incriminating document matched Dreyfus’s, it showed that Dreyfus had written it and where it didn’t, it showed that Dreyfus had written it whilst disguising his hand): where there is a “Novichok peak”, it shows that Novichok was present and where there wasn’t it shows that Novichok was there, but had “degraded in the blood, or not showing up under the typical MS ionisation conditions” whatever that means. Either this is complete piffle and you are clutching at straws now, or the NHS test is not worth a damn because if it is that unreliable on one poison, it is that unreliable on all.
I believe that Dawn collapsed due to influence of alcohol and prescription drugs – which she obviously had an issue with. An early witness statement by her partner’s associate Sam Hobson said she had been taking too many zopaclone sleeping pills, and had recently been diagnosed with bipolar. He and Dawn’s family both said she was not a heroin user. It’s possible that the trace of cocaine found was due to her being intimate partner of Charlie Rowley and living in a flat used by other drug users. We do not know.
Apparently Rowley collapsed later that day after taking heroin. There was said to be bad batch circulating in the area at the time – in police statements before the Novichok conection starting hitting the wires, four days after emergency services attended their flat. And local reporters were told it was a drug related incident..
“There was said to be bad batch circulating in the area at the time”
I remember seeing this in the news before it was decided it must be “Novichok”.
Bayard
From memory the initial possibility was Fentanyl poisoning in The Skripal’s case.
That seemed to be the most prolific drug around in the UK never mind Salisbury.
The following day the MSM changed the story to something else.
The day after it was Novichok.
Porton Down had been brought in as The Skripals were not responding to treatment for Fentanyl poisoning.
Fortunately for The Skripals, whatever they recommended as a treatment worked.
In order to come up with the correct treatment for The Skripals then they would have to know what possible poison caused the problem.
No expert but, being as The Skripals were saved by Porton Down experts then they would have to know what the poison was to come up with the antidote.
So, did the experts know what poison was used on The Skripal’s?
Logic says – yes otherwise they both would be dead.
If it was Novichok that could kill hundreds/thousands? of people (once it was known) then, why were people still shopping and wandering about in the shopping malls /drinking/eating and shopping?
The place would/should have been evacuated – a NO Go Area.
Instead, everything was alright as long as you kept outside of the Police Tape.
The un-inquisitive MSM never asked that question.
I am afraid the bit about her not being a heroin user is obviously untrue. Buprenorphin is a heroin substitute issued by the NHS on prescription to heroin addicts. She had either been prescribed it or obtained black market access to it.
Well if she was using Buprenorphin, which is also used to treat chronic and acute pain, on prescription it’s highly unlikely that she was using heroin as well.
A heroin addict is still a heroin addict, even if they have temporarily stopped taking heroin, especially if they are taking another drug which prevents withdrawal symptoms (mental and physical).
Who cares if she was an addict? It’s in her report, so she had it in her at the day.
“Who cares if she was an addict? ”
The British government care, as Dawn being a heroin addicts messes with their portrayal of her as an innocent victim of Russian terror tactics and suggests that her death was self-inflicted. The British tend to look down on addicts and the government want people to look up to Dawn as a martyr.
A possibility also is that Dawn Sturgess was very malnourished at the time of her death. There is a video on YouTube taken from the CCTV camera of the shop where she bought alcohol a day before she died. In the video, Sturgess looks thin and pale, and her arms look as though the skin is just hanging off them.
Heroin addiction can suppress the appetite and can cause other mental and physical issues that depress the appetite further or make eating uncomfortable or even impossible, and malnutrition will be one result along with a weak immune system. The effects of using other drugs can be compounded by malnutrition and weak immunity.
Chronic alcoholics are not particularly into food…
Nor are heroin addicts. Also the drug of choice tends to be purchased first with what money is available.
Apologies for quoting again but:
‘Western Europe can regain access to Russian hydrocarbons either by accepting a negotiated peace in Ukraine, or by attempting regime change in Russia. The political class in Europe have evidently decided to go all out for regime change.
It would of course be much easier, and much safer, to settle the Ukrainian conflict. We can identify the following reasons the European political “elite” is not taking that path:
Loss of face and political capital by in situ leaders who have gone all in for conflict with Russia – von der Leyen, Kallas, Merz, Rutte, Stubb etc
Generational family and national hatred of Russia by those wanting to reverse World War II in Eastern Europe – von der Leyen, Kallas, Merz, Stubb etc
Deep common interests between the political personnel and the military-industrial complex’
These aspects are strong predictors of the commitment shown by those who should know better, in particular the profit motive of the military industrial complex, however the suggestion that we might be willing to allow Russia to garner the level of profit that Middle Eastern countries have gained from selling their surplus oil oil for dollars, misses the point. Russia has a lot of oil and gas, as has Israel, once Gaza is emptied of current owners. The delivery to Europe and East to Turkey is ready to go. The choice therefore is between destroying all the oil and gas infrastructure which Russia has, or securing regime change, like in Venezuela, which gives full control to US companies as per the Monroe or Donroe doctrine.
Long range attacks from Ukraine have occurred since the beginning. Putin’s sentimental attachment to Russia’s silver age, its plethora of beautiful Christian religious buildings, and a Eurocentric respect for rule of law, have caused him to stick to his design to defend Russian speaking Ukrainians from the puppet government that was installed following the Maidan uprising, aka Arab Spring coordinated overthrow of the Russia leaning democratically elected former president, which created the conditions for the entrapment of European nations with promises of a share in the disposable Russian assets.
“We regret the sacrifice of the Ukrainian people” and “Fuck Europe” are the two key tenets of this conflict. I don’t know if Andy Burnham has any real chance of changing anything but he has angered the Israelis by saying that Britain will act within the parameters of International Law. They have rumbled threats immediately.
‘Operation Albiston Shadow is the largest UK home defence and war-gaming exercise in decades, announced by the government in July 2026 to take place in 2027’
So what is going on? Why all the giant wind turbines? What functions for data centres? How intrinsic is Palantir? Name the billionaires who are gaming our infrastructure?
Things are excessively complicated at the moment and perhaps that is the best we can hope for, for now.
However.
“The British Army has been ordered to suspend large-scale training exercises due to a shortage of cash for day-to-day defence spending, in a move which could weaken the country’s military readiness.”
https://www.gbnews.com/news/british-army-ordered-cease-activity-immediately-run-out-of-cash
Permit me to say, Ha, Ha, Ha. What a bunch of absolute tossers.
Sky’s report on Operation Albiston Shadow certainly smacks of war-mongering.
https://news.sky.com/story/uk-will-run-the-biggest-home-defence-exercise-in-decades-next-year-13563456
It’s Schroedinger’s Russia again, simultaneously a deadly threat to the
oligarchies, sorry, democracies of western Europe and too incompetent to sabotage a shipment of weapons to Ukraine.I wouldn’t worry too much – they’re paper tigers, it’s notable that Healey the war hawk when he flounced out of Starmer’s sinking ship, is noticeably less keen on vastly increased war expenditure now that he’s seen the books!
“We do want to fight,
But, by jingo! if we do,
We’ll have no ships,
We’ll have no men,
We’ll have no money, too.”
I love reading your analyses, Craig, and many of them are brilliant. But I feel this one merits a response, as you seem to have badly overshot the mark.
1) You argue that Germany’s gas shortage is a result of the sanctions on Russia.
That’s awfully incorrect.
First, Germany’s energy shortage is, to a significant extent, a direct consequence of its decision to shut down all six of its nuclear power plants as part of a “move to green energy” – or, rather, towards hydrocarbons supplied through Nord Stream, in which Gerhard Schröder and quite a few well-connected officials had vested interests.
Second, you conveniently skipped the fact that nearly all other EU countries currently have much higher gas storage levels: https://agsi.gie.eu, while receiving gas from Russia clearly isn’t helping Slovakia, which has the third-lowest level. Germany’s decision not to build up its gas reserves further is ultimately a sovereign one, even though it could easily do so as evident from previous years.
Third, over the last few years, the EU has significantly upgraded the CESA network, based on Directive 2019/944 (and it’s still very much a work in progress, by the way). There is now considerably more electricity that can be traded across the continent. In winter, Spain sells cheap electricity to the rest of Europe, while I recall that Norwegian electricity can sometimes reach negative prices – i.e. the operator effectively pays others to take their electricity.
Interestingly, the availability of low-cost Norwegian electricity is largely a consequence of public ownership of energy generation, transmission and distribution. Despite having a higher per-capita income than the UK, Norwegians pay roughly half the UK price per unit of electricity. The solution to high energy cost isn’t: buy Russian gas, but rather: nationalise at least power generation and transmission, and get rid of 80% of the private distributors. Don’t believe me? Take a look at wholesale gas prices across Europe/UK.
2) You’re claiming that the European political class has decided on regime change in Russia. Do you have evidence for such a far-reaching statement? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
By the way, let me guess that your words will be quoted tomorrow in Russian state media as a “statement from a former Western diplomat”.
I’m no member of the political class, but I’m yet to hear a serious politician even discussing forced government change in Russia. For what it’s worth, the EU has been trying for decades to change the regimes in the countries the size of Serbia and Belarus, with little to show for it. So that’s that.
3) “Yet we are repeatedly told by both politicians and the media that Russia is the threat to the UK.”
The message I get from the UK media is generally that Russia is a threat to British interests worldwide. Often, there is no sensible rationale for the consistently negative coverage of Russia. It could be a remnant of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – the famed Great Game; I don’t know. I find no rational explanation for the very obvious enmity between the two countries today. By the way, the UK is presented in exactly the same irrational manner in Russian media.
Could be that empires often need an external “threat” as a justification for maintaining military power – the kind of power that, in turn, helps keep an empire an empire.
Frankly, I don’t believe Russia is currently a military threat to any country. Russia has no capacity to manage a second regional conflict in parallel. I recall – don’t quote me on this – that Russian military doctrine envisaged its armed forces having the capacity to engage either in one large international armed conflict, or in one regional conflict and two local conflicts. With Ukraine constituting a regional conflict for all practical purposes, Russia could, at most, undertake a military intervention in Armenia or Mongolia with the mlitary power it currently has, but little beyond that. (The doctrine was, in any case, considerably more ambitious than the reality.)
Sure, I might be wrong – as the Finns learned the hard way in 1939, a few weeks after rather friendly negotiations with the Soviet fell through.
4) “The notion that the boundaries of a Ukrainian state, which had never existed in history until 1991, are so sacrosanct they cannot be adjusted to avoid World War III, is mad.”
Ireland would like to have a word with you about forced “border adjustments” by a neighbouring power. I also very much hope your words won’t be quoted in Westminster a few years after an independent Scotland is established. Or by Israel in relation to Palestine.
On a more serious note, borders “adjusted” by force tend to be unstable and prone to further conflict. We’ve seen it everywhere throughout history. There must be a negotiated end to the war, rather than any sort of capitulation. I do however agree that Ukraine should not expect to regain all of the lost territories. The country was arguably unsustainable as a single political entity long before 2022. Are Putin and Zelensky willing to freeze the conflict and convert the current frontline into an international border? It doesn’t look like. No, neither is Zelensky willing to lose elections and thus his job, nor is Putin willing to lose face and then his job. Empires and their rulers don’t need peace to thrive, besides a tsar’s word in Russia was always sacred. And the word was: liberate Novorossiya.
One final point: there is no World War III that suddenly needs to be avoided. There isn’t one on the books. Waving the WW3 flag is Medvedev’s role. Same horse manure as Trump’s threats to nuke Iran.
5) “Amateur toy drone”.
Well, either the drone existed – in which case we accept the published photographs, in which it certainly doesn’t look anything like a toy – or we say the whole thing is a hoax.
But given that I have no access whatsoever to credible sources on this matter, I’d be very reluctant to take a firm position on the drone claims.
From a methodological perspective, I’d simply try to avoid false analogies, such as comparisons with Novichok. Analogies have zero evidentiary value and tend to be terribly misleading.
But even if the drone never existed, it’s a fair game. “Persecution of Russians in Novorossiya” was similarly an invented thing, and for something much much bloodier and claiming many more civilian lives. So, let’s try to be fair.
I very much hope you don’t mind me questioning your post so openly. If you do, feel free to delete this comment. Simply, I find it easier to respond to something I disagree with, which is perhaps a tad unfair. I do follow and agree with lots of your analysis, though, and thank yuo for that.
Cheers,
K
Kacper, you said to Craig that:
You’re claiming that the European political class has decided on regime change in Russia. Do you have evidence for such a far-reaching statement? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
And said that you are:
yet to hear a serious politician even discussing forced government change in Russia.
The US and its Nato allies and its propaganda machine – ie the MSM – turned everything on its head and, as such, painted Putin as the aggressor etc, and so they are hardly then going to turn round and say that their objective is regime change – ie to get shod of Putin and have him (hopefully) replaced by a Western puppet. They just keep piling on the sanctions so as to make life harder and harder for many Russians on the one hand (and this of course goes back to the Salisbury episode, which was all contrived), and increasingly targeting not only inside Russia, but ever deeper inside Russia on the other hand. Things have changed under Trump in respect of Russia it would appear, but he and his nazi buddies are most likely just playing a game with Putin, and he’s certainly not doing anything to hold the European nazis back from increasingly ramping up their ‘assistance’ to Ukraine and their provocation.
And that of course is how and why it all kicked off – ie by the West provoking Putin/Russia into invading Ukraine, so that they could then start a proxy war with Russia. They could have easily agreed to the proposals Russia made a couple of months or so beforehand, but Biden and Co rejected and dismissed them, and did so precisely because they wanted a proxy war with Russia. Now why would they do that – and have no problem whatsoever with the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives etc, etc, etc – unless they had an objective?
And of course because they are all demented twisted psychopaths who want to rule and control the whole world!
At least Kacper got something right: the EU foreign policy representative is not a serious politician (as in, a politician worth taking seriously).
Incoming EU Foreign Minister Approves Of Breaking Russia Into Smaller States
… Footage from the 2024 Lennart Meri Conference held in May in Tallinn, Estonia seems to reveal a new goalpost for the E.U. in regards to the Ukraine-Russia conflict. The former Estonian Prime Minister and incoming E.U. foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas spoke before the conference asserting that “Russia’s defeat is not a bad thing, because […] there are many different nations a part of Russia,” concluding that “if you have small nations it’s not a bad thing if the big power is much smaller.” …
Video of Kaja Kallas making the statement:
https://x.com/eeldenden/status/1792880764498935872
Consider who you’re twisting yourself into pretzels for.
1. You keep jumping from “gas shortage” to “energy shortage” and back, and ignore the fact that these are not the same. Also, you never mentioned that 98% of Norwegian electricity comes from hydro plants that are impossible in Germany, and the fact that that natural gas that Germany stockpiled now was way more expensive than the gas Germany got from Russia. Yes, they do have gas, but no, this did not help their economy. Germany’s XXI century’s economic boom was based on cheap hydrocarbons from Russia and trade with China; now both factors are gone.
2. The conflict with Ukraine is not regional. Russia is in a de facto war with NATO. If not for NATO help, Ukraine would have been finished in maybe 3 months.
3. “One final point: there is no World War III that suddenly needs to be avoided. There isn’t one on the books.”
Neither World War I nor World War II were on the books. Wars are a strange phenomena: they are never on the books yet they always happen. Especially, if no one is working on making peace. European philistines like you are always the same. The war is never on the books for you, then suddenly you die in millions.
You see, despite what BBC tells you, Ukraine is on the brink of finally losing this war of attrition and the UK/EU leadership just can’t afford such defeat. They have no choice but to keep escalating the conflict, betting on that Putin will be striking Ukraine, not them. But at some point Putin will strike you. Russia has way more nukes than you have, and Putin knows that Trump does not give a damn about Europe. So yes, WW3 is definetely on the books, you just can’t read them.
Certainly they are prodding the bear. It could be that they have no choice but to keep escalating the conflict but the reason is not what you say.
As for Trump, he doesn’t give a damn about either Europe or the USA…
“You’re claiming that the European political class has decided on regime change in Russia. Do you have evidence for such a far-reaching statement? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
This is not an extraordinary claim.
Those who say things like “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” rarely take on board that people have different views on what counts as “extraordinary”, and most probably they’ve always been too lazy to examine their own.
Anyway “extraordinary” is one of those words that about 95% of the times I hear it I wish I were somewhere else. Often it’s posh for “wow” or sometimes “yuck”, or sometimes “ner-ner ni ner-ner”.
“Ireland would like to have a word with you about forced “border adjustments” by a neighbouring power. ”
The entirety of Ukraine’s borders, indeed, almost the whole of eastern Europe’s borders are forced “border adjustments” by a neighbouring power(s) in the aftermath of WWI. However you are right about them causing trouble down the line, as WWII amply demonstrated. The current problems in Ukraine also stem from Ukraine being bolted together out of part of Russia and part of Poland, with bits of Hungary and Romania thrown in for good measure. Like Czechoslovakia, it was never going to last long once it was not under the control of the USSR. At least the Czechs and the Slovaks were far enough away from Russia that fomenting a war there made little point.
You appear to be ignoring both the long history of Crimea’s attempts to not be part of Ukraine, which it had been pushed into by Krushchev within living memory, and the referendums held there and elsewhere which showed that the people who lived in the areas now included as part of Russia very much approved of the change, or do you subscribe to the belief that those referendums must have been rigged as they returned the Wrong Answer?
“The solution to high energy cost isn’t: buy Russian gas, but rather: nationalise at least power generation and transmission, and get rid of 80% of the private distributors. Don’t believe me? Take a look at wholesale gas prices across Europe/UK.”
Not gonna happen. the whole energy section of the economy is set up to benefit middlemen and speculators, along with other huge chunks of Europe’s economy.
– “…extraordinarily thin gruel…”
Yes. I’ve only vaguely heard of this story. I haven’t looked into it yet. A “drone similar to types made in Russia”, er, found near a Ukrainian aircraft in Germany or something? A bit Novichokish? Hmm. I’d best read the rest of Craig’s article…
Actually no, this isn’t nonsense.
The reason is that novichok is toxic in extraordinarily tiny quantities, below what even standard toxicology labs can detect. It’s not implausible that the Porton Down lab, which has done research specifically on nerve poisons, can detect it in lower quantities than normal toxicology labs.
Of course this is just one small point, the rest of your discussion is convincing.
As I recall, they claimed that their methods are secret, so they can’t disclose any data. So we just have to trust them.
” So we just have to trust them.”
because they’ve never lied to us before, ever.
“The reason is that novichok is toxic in extraordinarily tiny quantities, below what even standard toxicology labs can detect.”
and yet, so far it has completely failed to kill anyone, except, possibly, a drug addict who was in very poor health. Meanwhile, despite several people coming into contact with a door handle on which it was smeared, not a single one has died and many have suffered no ill effects.
Instead of trying to believe six impossible things before breakfast, like the Queen in “Alice through the Looking Glass”, as the authorities would have us do, why not take the more logical and plausible case that the whole thing is a fabrication.
Porton Down use PCR testing which will detect infinitely small samples of most stuff, even when it doesn’t actually exist like Covid. However, I believe that Novichok needs to first be activated by a special physical device called a DoorKnob. 🙂
Excellent!
Small point of information: a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test detects specific segments of genetic material (DNA or RNA) rather than general chemical substances or drugs.
Something even more ridiculous: a few days ago, Germanys main news outlets broke that two pistols had been found buried in the woods. For a whole year, the police monitored the site 24/7, but nobody tried to dig them up again during that time, so we have absolutely no idea who they belong to or who buried them or when they where put there. Now, all of a sudden, the official line is: ‘This is a cache belonging to Russian agents for potential attacks’. I have to repeat it: they simply found two pistols in the woods. Owner unknown. But it must be a Russian intelligence operation!! In Germany, there’s an expression, ‘Räuberpistole’ (literally: ‘robber’s pistol’), which refers to a particularly far-fetched and implausible story that no one in their right mind could believe. That seems to me to be a particularly apt description in this case.
Source: https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/ndr-wdr/geheimes-waffendepot-100.html
The European governments including that of the UK seem to have entirely lost their minds but probably they never had minds in the first place. As far as I am concerned both they and the US are the enemy not Russia. Thankfully, Russia is winning and Ukraine should get a sane representative of a government when they do. The big greedies who have “ownership” of Ukraine’s land and resources to pay for Ukraine being their proxy will lose their “investment”. The Leipzig drone and poor Dawn Sturgess seem to me to have the smell of MI6 sticky fingers. I’m sure many many people in Europe would love to visit Russia, I’m also sure they won’t go to war with her, maybe the European governments should wake up and actually hear their people.
‘ As far as I am concerned both they and the US are the enemy not Russia.’
Absolutely, Rosemary. The only way the warmongering psychos of the EUK Buffoonery will be able to get their populaces to fight and die for the Globalist Oligarchy is at gun-point. Even that would fail, for one thing because there are more of us than there are of ” them “. If ” they ” are so gung-ho to start WW3, they should be first in line, along with THEIR sons and daughters, grandchildren and other family members. Likewise the screeching hysterics cheering the lunacy on from the comfort/safety of their living rooms and * News*paper offices
Hear, hear!
Our governments always lie to us about almost everything important. This has been true for my entire lifetime (I’m 79). The MSM used to employ investigative journalists who would sometimes uncover something true (Seymour Hersh, John Pilger, …) but since 2014 they don’t any more.
Some people may find this extreme, but Rosemary is right. Think about it. Who, or what, is most likely to arrest you, imprison you, or otherwise harm you? The government of the country you live in. It’s got worse: they used to have to charge you with a crime, then eventually you’d get a trial, be able to challenge the evidence, etc. It wasn’t much protection since the government could (and did) rig trials, but it was something. Now, they don’t even have to do that, they can “sanction” you, basically making it impossible to live a normal life. They can (and have) declare (with no evidence) that any organisation is “terrorist” then imprison you for 10+ years for supporting it. Mr Putin can’t do any of those things to you or me, and tales of his wanting to invade Poland/Germany/etc are just that, fairy tales to frighten the children.
‘ As far as I am concerned both they and the US are the enemy not Russia.’
You only have to ask yourself, which foreign country has kept armed forces permanently stationed in the UK since 1945?
re: The RU-UKR-EU angle
To expect regime change in Russia is about as realistic as Martians landing.
Any government in Western Europe is more unstable.
If London/Washington would indeed dare a serious, violent coup d´etat that´d most likely end in WWIII.
What should be on the agenda is trouble in Kiev.
As the incentives of European elites go:
1) Fear of the US as a rogue state:
Noam Chomsky put it out explicitely when discussing with Bill Fletcher in April 2022:
https://therealnews.com/noam-chomsky-a-left-response-to-the-russian-invasion-of-ukraine
“(…)
FLETCHER: you’re attributing a lot to the role of the US, but every NATO country has a veto over the entry of another country into NATO. So despite what the United States was pushing, there were at least two NATO countries, Germany and France, that were against the introduction of Ukraine into NATO. (…) what am I missing?
CHOMSKY: You’re missing the nature of international affairs. In international affairs, the fact of the matter is that the United States has overwhelming power. Other countries exist, they can do something, but when the United States lays down the law, they follow it. (…)
So universal opposition, but universal adherence to them because they’re terrified of the United States. Other countries won’t violate US sanctions, even though they oppose them and hate them (…) because they understand international affairs. They understand that the United States is a violent, rogue state (…)”.
John Mearsheimer hinted at something similiar August 2025: He stated that the EU is more afraid of the US leaving Europe than of Russia.
2) I don´t believe for a second the Russophobia to be genuine and pervasive on this level.
That people like the personnel named above are crazy is one thing. But they are crazy regardless of the political issues. They are willing to claim hate of anybody if it serves their interests and self-preservation.
The most profound Russophobia which we are confronted with via legacy media is mainly an “upper-class” phenomenon.
Some of the most insane views are to be found within for instance some branches of the diplomatic service or Eastern European historic scholarship.
Not by coincidence was it always the most Russophobic and incompetent German aristocratic families whose offspring would be dispatched to Moscow in the last 20 years.
And not by coincidence has academia´s Russophobia been whipped up by those universities that have chairs that were set up in the Cold War with the very intent to do “anti-USSR” research. In this twisted mindset it is not unusual that institutes such as the Hamburg Institute for Peace and Security (IFSH) or the Leibniz Institute in Leipzig (PRIF) are among the most vengeful and adamantly calling for war. Just as “1984” has taught us.
But this is an elitist minority in part playing a role. In part true believers. How large in percentage I cannot say. But normal people have simply no time to engage in this craze.
3) Russophobia 1941 vs. 2026
However none of this is identical with the actual genocidal mindset of 1941. The Russophobia today – in part – is a token product of NATO think tanks to be explicitely used by the media to paper over all other views. They manipulate the perception.
As I repeated over the years: Published opinion is NOT public opinion.
The only reason why this giant fraud and lie machinery still works is simply that the critical mass of Germans is still too wealthy to rise up. So instead they accept the white noise and carry on with their lives.
In 1941 to attack the USSR was an idea that appealed to millions.
However an important limit to this: The Nazis did NOT put forward their extermination plans. Neither Holocaust nor Generalplan Ost. Both were super-secret even to the inside (look at the dishonesty of the secret Wannsee Conference transcript where the obvious was never spilled out.)
So it would be a misconstruction to think Hitler´s band of morons went from door to door in 1933 telling voters :“Hey we are here to sign you up exterminating Soviet men women and children. Are you in?“
Instead even well into the war Hitler explicitely stated that German population needed to experience as little as possible from the war. The extermination dawned on them over the course of the war mainly through the letters of their sons and fathers at the Eastern Front.
4) Greed not war is the answer – which would be Craig´s last point.
In fact the whole narrative of a new MIC in Germany and Europe was the answer to the failure of their UKR plans to overpower RU.
Since that failed the elites needed a contingency plan for their own safety and well-being. And they came up with sucking the blood out of their countries. Because that´s what you do: If the enemy cannot be expropriated you do it your own population.
Since no people will give up its wealth just like that however now RU needs to be portrayed as an existential threat. Under this cover even leftist parties are capable to abandon their core identity when voting for the latest war budget or simply abstaining.
German leadership knows darn well that any serious military confrontation with RU would kill so many of their EU armed forces that it would cost them their political careers.
Real war is in fact the worst-case-scenario for Europe´s ruling class. But since this must not be understood by the public what they are doing – smartly – is doubling down on claiming the total opposite of what they really think.
And for those nimwits in Berlin who didn´t get the message, such brutes as Zhaluzny delivered the message several times: Recently with THE TELEGRAPH I blieve and then in Kiev during a closed session with personnel from the UKR State Department when he made clear that NATO is behind 30 years and the Western industries are not cut out for this kind of war.
5) Ukraine in ruins and Russia´s turn to the East
Europe needs to accept that the war in Ukraine has long been lost and Ukraine will end up destroyed just as Mearsheimer had warned 2014. The country has lost 60% of its 1991 population by now. 10M are able to work. The RUs are destroying its entire industrial base. The country will be on life support after this. And Russia will seal off its flank to Europe and turn to the East with all its wealth. Almost nobody in European media is aware of the scale of industrial projects being developed in the Russo-Asian theatre.
And as Katrin Kneissl the former Austrian SoS said on Glenn Diesen´s show a few weeks ago: Essentially Europe is poor. We have almost nothing. The attempt to seize Russian and Ukrainian resources was the only alternative for EU´s ruling class to confronting the US or to turn on its own population as they do now.
Had European academia had any expertise in military affairs or serious geopolitical understanding based on numbers not narratives maybe some of this could have been averted knowing that this nonsense of overextending Russia would end up with the overwhelming of Europe.
And no, there is no light in the end here. Only a slow descent into oblivion of what once could have been a stellar future.
“To expect regime change in Russia is about as realistic as Martians landing.”
They rely on what Russian emigres tell them, and Russian emigres tell them exactly what they want to hear (or else they won’t be paid). The idea of regime change is comfortable to the Westerners because they convinced themselves that Russia is a dictatorship, and people always rebel against dictators, don’t they? So at some point the Russians must simply follow the “rules” and start an uprising against Putin’s regime.
Yep. After 4 years now it is nauseating in a way that I´ve learned to not hear or read it when it´s addressed.
Which is why I find it a bit off that Craig uses it here.
But if he believes it´s necessary to mention this PR talking point then be it.
p.s.
re: on the Leipzig airport drone farce
Mark Sleboda in his latest conversation with Garland Nixon offers another good explanation for the larger picture.
“Kiev/NATO to Escalate Drone War to Russian Airports & Civilian Airliners”
https://marksleboda.substack.com/p/kievnato-to-escalate-drone-war-to
One has to listen to the first 30 min. unfortunately because it´s spread across the entire time since Sleboda connects the various dots in relation to the failed 40-day drone campaign, the Ratfcliffe visit and the RUs shutting down all trade and traffic in the Black Sea to UKR which he calls the most singificant campaign of this sort so far.
He reminded of “Operation M&M” (it´s seriously the name of it) which was described in THE ATLANTIC by the (that´s me) insufferbale Simon Shuster:
“(…) the officials wanted to launch waves of AI-enabled drones at Moscow’s airports, hoping to stop international carriers from flying in and out of the Russian capital, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the plan, which has not been previously reported.(…)”
Selenski now warned that civil airliners could be hit. (like: Not our fault.) But that´s the plan: If they can´t hit military installations they do this and if they happen to kill a few hundred Russians in an Aerflot even better.
Now the idea that Leipzig is an airport is supposed to provide the justification in the usual tit-for-tat logic:
“You attacked an airport. Now we may hit back.”
I don´t need to go into the level of idiocy and infantility of all this.
THE ATLANTIC:
“Ukraine Planned to Swarm Moscow Airports With AI-Guided Drones
The stalled operation, code-named “M&Ms,” sought to isolate Russian elites and force Vladimir Putin to negotiate a truce.”
By Simon Shuster
Aug. 20th
https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/ukraine-moscow-airports-ai-drones/688337/
Well, I hope Zelensky simply tried to help his European handlers. You see, the European airlines are losing profits because their Chinese, Indian, Turkish etc competitors are using Russian airspace, and they are not. So naturally, passengers prefer to fly faster and cheaper, and KLM, FinAir and the rest are losing money. Thus, if Zelensky spooks away the Chinese and the Indians by such threats, they won’t use Russian airspace anymore and Europeans will regain their competitive advantages.
But if I am wrong, God help us.
Thanks for this excellent exegesis of the whole sorry – and despicable – Ukraine catastrophe, AG.
Authored by the poisonous snakes of the UK/US Insecurity Services in collusion with the pathologically greedy – for fame & lucre – Zelensky Criminal Org; AMPLIFIED TO DEAFENING POINT by the harpies & banshees of the MSM; and served-up to the battered, bruised n bamboozled ( by constant barrages of propaganda ) public by those flunkies-to-power/wealth in the Political Class.
I hope you’re right that the entire Project Ukraine is, in essence, more a form of macabre theatre that literal attempt to start WW3 with Russia
We have to hope that even the unhinged protagonists of NATO/EUK/US understand there can be no winner if an actual full-on Nuclear War is instigated. Formerly I thought there were such people in the key positions that did understand this: I’m really not sure anymore.
The least worse scenario likely from ” all this ” is the further imposition of state control over, well, everything. The turning of EUK into * quasi * Martial Law imposed states; hyper-Austerity ” justified ” by vast military spending ( ie, even vaster ). Not as awful as Nuclear War, obv, but still socially, psychologically and emotionally pretty fckn grim.
“Not as awful as Nuclear War, obv, but still socially, psychologically and emotionally pretty fckn grim.”
That´s what disturbs me most: That the viable alternative is not worthy to fight for.
Any more.
Where have all the utopias gone?
Clare Daly said it with THE DURAN two years ago – “My hope now lies with the Global South”.
Perhaps looking beyond the space we are familiar with – for the Europeans among us here – offers a glimmer of hope.
Indeed, AG. What’s happening to Europe, more accurately, what’s being done to Europe is an unmitigated tragedy.
Not just the warmongering lunacy; there’s the undeniably negative impacts of Mass Immigration ( * note….not ” blame “, impacts ) in addition to intense Centralisation of power/control within EUK and the monomaniac adherence to Neolib/Capitalist dogma.
The Continent of Socrates, Plato, Newton, Einstein amongst other philosophical/scientific geniuses; the artistic marvels of the Renaissance, Impressionism, Cubism etc; the sublime Classical Music of Beethoven, Mozart, Debussy, Ravel et al and into the wonderful, uplifting glories of the ” Pop ” Era – personified – in my mind at least, by the Beatles.
That breath-taking legacy now ending-up in the promotion of dim, dismal and demented/deluded idiots like Von der Leyen, Kallas, Rutte, Macron, Merz – newly arrived fellow donkey – Burnham. Depressing, only slightly leavened by the comedy value of watching this Clown Collective posture & perform their scripts like the proverbial headless poultry.
Yes, I know the Continent of Europe also produced, eg an endless procession of devasting wars – religious & territorial, the madness of the Inquisition and monstrous, * contemporary * individuals like Stalin and Hitler.
Still, other parts of the world produced similar disasters without creating the abundance of wonderful things Europe did as – some kind of – mitigation
Chomsky has always opposed sanctions against the Occupation regime, he was pals with Jeffrey Epstein, and he’s a generalised buffoon.
One of the few things he’s ever said that hit the nail on the head was that the notion of “speaking truth to power” is c*ck. Gotta agree with him about that, although I probably said it before he did. (But the more people who understand it, the better.)
Craig, good point about the analysis data. Chemical analysis methods used these days such as GC-MS or HPLC are both qualitative and quantitative; if the numbers were missing in the report, someone deliberately removed them.
One of the tells for me concerning Novichok, or any chemical/ biological agent being present, was the press footage of the MoD specialists working behind security tapes in yellow hazmat suits, yet not 15m away was a policeman looking on without as much as a dust mask.
Presumably neither the Met PC nor the intrepid press photographer got the memo about the deadly chemical weapons attack and appropriate dress code.
By itself, there is no proof of anything, perhaps the picture was a reenactment for the camera, or it was probably an expedient use of equipment issued at the time. But to a casual observer like me, it looked staged, and inconsistent with the epicentre of a potent nerve agent being released, where unprotected citizens, even bobbies on the beat, would surely be evacuated to safe distance.
It looked very much like 10-15m “was” a safe distance, so draw your own Occam’s razor conclusions.
was the press footage of the MoD specialists working behind security tapes in yellow hazmat suits, yet not 15m away was a policeman looking on without as much as a dust mask.
That’s because those guys in the hazmat suits have to suit up in a safe area. Durrr…
I think you’ve missed the point.
This russophobia puts a damper on trade between West Europe and Russia. This serves the interests of Russia’s competitors. Cui bono.
ditto the blowing-up of Nordstream, ” obliging ” Germany and other parts of the Euro Idiotocracy to buy much more expensive gas from, eh…..let me think……aye, the U.S of Zion. Good ol’ Pyscho Sam wins again
@Johnny – Who do you see as Russia’s competitors? (Turkey? China? EU? Gulf despots? Wall Street? I’d be interested to hear your view.) Anything that leads to big weapons contracts pleases those who receive rake-offs and kickbacks from said contracts.
@Yuri is right that “wars are never on the books yet they always happen.” At least, many politicians can’t see beyond the ends of their noses. People like Basil Zaharoff certainly could, as also very probably can Peter Thiel and Sam Altmann.
“Who do you see as Russia’s competitors? ”
Wall Street.
If Europe were at peace with Russia then it would do business with Russia leading to the integration of the Russian and European economies. This would strengthen Russia’s economy and thus in time its military strength, which would make it able to expand its economic interests to the detriment of the interests of western oligarchs.
A ‘sanction’ which forbids trade between two parties is a sanction on both parties, so Europe is cutting its own throat economically for the benefit of American interests. Its a kind of scorched earth policy for an empire in retreat.
[ MOD: Kindly leave the URL field blank unless you are actually entering something valid. Thanks. ]
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Craig, a few years ago when Jeremy Corbyn asked a question in parliament about the Salisbury poisoning, and was roundly attacked by the Tories for being ‘unpatriotic’, I commented a Guardian article on this by saying that Corbyn was not skeptical enough, and referred to your excellent ten point rebuttal of the official version of events. Almost immediately a response to my comment came through “But Craig Murray is a loony conspiracy theorist”. So there you have it – all your meticulous research apparently counts for nothing!
Anyone who hasn’t been called a “loony conspiracy theorist”, an “anti-Semite”, an “anti-vaxxer”, a “Freeman on the Land”, or “an awful person with snow on their boots who doesn’t know you’re supposed to bow or curtsey to the king” is doing something wrong.
The key points is you can’t fight the system from within.
Didn’t know I’d put anything in it. It must be a typo as I was sitting on a bus when sending in my comment!
Have posted a 14 line poem on the Genocide [dated 3/09/2026] and haiku [04/09/2026]. These are on p.2 of the Contemporary poetry forum.
There is a history of conscientious objection in this country. For those concerned about the implications for the welfare of children and young people here I think it would be prudent to educate them on this right and how they can establish contact with the relevant organisations. Happy to post links if anyone struggles to find them.
As a further aside if the ruling elite are desperate to impose their ideological bent on the young people of this country then I have a suggestion for them that ought to correspond to their outlook. The Public/Private schools
[ independent schools/non-state sector] have for decades thrown themselves on the charity of the U.K taxpayer. Now could be the time for a return on that investment ? I would suggest that if conscription is being seriously considered then the Public/Private schools should be the initial and exclusive vanguard to test what conscription would be like in practice.. The success or failure of this project could be reviewed after 3 to 5 years ? If we say that each school of Charitable status needs to provide at 50 per cent of it cohort for conscription ( from 17-18 years of age) to the military for the front ranks (not officers) and if there is a short-fall then all conscription should be undertaken for public school educated young people (the schools with charitable status will have the records) below the age of 35. This would have the secondary effect of freeing up positions for working class graduates to help back fill vacancies in the institutions these older public school educated conscripts were employed in. Calculating the cohort of privately educated young people from 17-35 in the country would yeild ( according to my search engine):
“Over the last twenty years, the total number of young people attending private (independent) schools in the UK has consistently averaged around 550,000 to 650,000 pupils enrolled at any given time”
I think this should be more than sufficient at the outset of conscription ?
@Johnny – First, I don’t know why the qualifier “for decades” came into your post. It’s not as if these institutions were once something other than “charities” and then became charities only a few decades ago.
Second, on top private schools and the British army, you may find the following sites of interest.
An interesting question is whether any of them engage in internet work as part of their military activities at school. They may very well do. If so, perhaps some of them have even visited these very threads as part of their service to king and country. (For the avoidance of doubt – I am not joking.)
https://www.etoncollege.com/outside-the-classroom/ccf/
https://www.facebook.com/WCCCF/
https://web.archive.org/web/20180701010829/https://www.winchestercollege.org/combined-cadet-force
https://www.wcsch.com/515/cadets
https://combinedcadetforce.org.uk/
Brian Red:
Thanks Brian I will check out the links.
I was not sure if the charity tax status was a permenant feature of the private school system. The general point was that if conscription for future wars is the answer to a current problem then private/public schools as beneficiaries of tax exemptions should be called upon to do this and not the state school educated classes.
As far as I know, the ones that are charities now have always been charities. This certainly applies to places like Eton and Winchester. Previously (for hundreds of years) they were unregistered charities. (An unregistered charity is of course a ridiculous type of entity that shouldn’t exist. We are talking about fictitious persons that own very large amounts of assets here. But neither should this type of school exist, charity or not.) Then they registered. They may even have been behind the new legislation about charity registration in the first place, or at least one of the players. I am in favour of whatever weakens these vile institutions.
It is interesting that for all the talk of child “safeguarding” that has been spewed out by the hypocritical authorities in Britain for the past ~40 years, there is not a single known case of police or social services entering the hallowed premises of a boarding school to investigate current allegations of child abuse. (Can we imagine a policeman or local council official contacting a headmaster or housemaster at a top boarding school and saying “We’ve had a report…”? Anyone who knows Britain knows this isn’t how the social hierarchy works here.) The situation is comparable to the situation with the untouchability of Catholic priests in Ireland before the wind changed.
Hi Brian.
Cases of historic sexual abuse are investigated and these iinvestigations cover all the institutions in the UK. These disclosures are often 20/30/40 years after the fact. Contemporary disclosures of sexual abuse are reported to the local authority. Local Authorities have designated officers [LADO] who help co-ordinate the multi-agency response to disclosures of abuse by professionals/volunteers who are in positions of trust. Whether all cases of alleged abuse are reported by the institutions that educate the elite is hard to tell but I know from my own professional experience that child protection investigations do take place for children who attend private schools. I know that the author Francis Wheen ( also a writer for Private Eye) has written about his experiences in this sector and that Charles Spenser, Alex Renton and Nicky Campbell (from Scotland) have also reported what happened to them within the private school system. Without getting too “Woke” about it the group who are most likely to sexually abuse children are those of the male sex. Patriarchal institutions with rigid hierarchies can create a culture where children and junior staff are fearful of disclosing concerns and challenging the behaviour of their superiors.
I think that the first people to be conscripted should be all those who said they’d “stand with Ukraine”. Then they can have a chance to do so, somewhere in a muddy field in Donetsk oblast with a rifle in their hand. Then all those who put a Ukranian flag on their social media accounts or were responsible for flying a Ukranian flag in the UK. Finally the 77th Brigade and the other cyberwarriors can be set to tracking down all those who called for war with Russia on the internet so that they, too can help make it happen, from the front line. I would look forward to certain commenters on this blog sending their comments from the field and letting us know how they are getting on in the glorious fight against the evil Russian orcs.
It appears that 77 brigade have done away with literate squaddies, to be replaced with analytical algorithms based in a data centre somewhere. AI can be recognised by long detailed arguments, often with numbered points. It is also programmed not to present only one side of the story.
We all ask how the hell have we come to this? Each day I come up with a different answer. Today’s thought, is that we have become a bunch of simpering softies.
Looking back I can visualise televised trade union conferences in the 60s and 70s populated with hard faced men smoking Woodbines, scowling at the cameras. 25 years earlier they may have been serving and engaged in killing an enemy at close range. Even their officers (by then, managerial class ) treated these people with respect.
They’re all long dead, but those I can remember would have thought the likes of Nigel Farage as the bullshitting wanker he really is. This current ‘one-party state’ simply couldn’t have existed in those times. Even Thatcher and her original vegetables had to tread warily at first. Then came the Falklands, then the Miners strike then the Big bang. House prices and two cars on the driveway became a measure of self worth. Most of the United Kingdom north of Watford became an industrial wasteland and the residents became a kind of Noblesse oblige, presided over by a smiling Monarch and her family of idiots. Then a grinning pixie ( one of us !) became prime minister and you know the rest.
Jeremy Corbyn might have been an honest well-meaning person but sadly what was needed at the time was a more intimidating character, someone to tell Tom Watson, John Mann and all the ‘friends’ to go and fuck themselves. Sadly the net result has become a parliament full of obedient thick twats and a BBC straight out of the world of Dr Goebbels. So my original question “how did it come to this” ? Answer ; Because of certain folk in the USA and their quest for a 1000 year Reich.
We’re used to hearing the likes of General Shirreff shouting ‘bring it on’ to the possibility of war with Russia, but to hear Emma Barnett on BBC, asking a minister if it was even permissible for Diane Abbott to question the ‘Russia narrative’ and that by implication she was performing straight out of ‘Putins Playbook’, basically sums up our surreality.
In actual fact, We do shit, Russia does shit and the USA does even more shit ( as for Israel, well that’s beyond mention, they’re jolly good chaps ! )
Is sarcasm illegal yet ?
Excellent post, compadre
Seconded.
Ace post there, Foggonthewing.
You can do shit but not the stupid shit. This is what ex-POTUS Obama said when interviewed by Atlantic. He was asked what was his lesson from the US intervention in Libya, to which he replied “Do not do stupid shit.”
“Because of certain folk in the USA and their quest for a 1000 year Reich.”
In Britain, there is a tendency to think the Yanks are good chaps, because they got the country out of a war it should never have got into in the first place and which, if it wasn’t losing, it certainly wasn’t winning. Also they speak the same language. In fact, the world makes much more sense if you assume that the USA is the source of all evil. It’s like moving from the geocentric model of the solar system to the heliocentric: both are valid, but the latter is much simpler.
Just read X post from Johnny Miller – a possible sign of things to come for Craig Murray – again.
“Yesterday I was detained by British security services in London as I tried to board a train to Paris. Five-hour interrogation. About my reporting in Russia. They took my devices. Demanded my pin codes.
Schedule 3 of the Terrorism Act. Set up to investigate those suspected of hostile foreign state actions. “We’re trying to figure out whether you’re friend or foe”, I was told.”
I hope he gets his equipment back soon.
British cops still haven’t given me back my computer equipment and documents they seized two years ago…
Unfortunately, you might not get them back ever.
Things are ‘investigated’ until they conveniently become ‘lost’, seems to be the general experience.
What barm pot would carry a phone or a laptop these days?
““We’re trying to figure out whether you’re friend or foe”, I was told.”
Presumably that is friend or foe to the government, not the country.
This seems to be what the UK is putting itself at risk for. Quote is from Ria Novosti bit I have seen it elsewhere and the sources are Ukrainian.
“On Wednesday, Ukrainian media reported that employees of the State Security Service and the SBU staged a shootout in Kiev because they could not share fraudulent call centers. As a result, one employee of the Main Intelligence Directorate was killed and two others were wounded. Later, the SBU announced that the military attacked its employees during a special operation. In turn, Zelensky announced that an internal investigation was being conducted against the heads of the SBU and GUR and charges were being brought against two participants in the shootout”.
Of course it’s nonsense. The Gleiwitz Incident was nonsense as well, but it gave Hitler the excuse he needed to attack Poland.
Partly I think the British establishment is panicking over domestic scandals which show it in a very bad light (see Stolen Children on BBC iPlayer, the nuclear test scandals, the Post Office computer/prosecutions scandal that apparently Peter Mandelson persuaded Tony Blair to get into, and so on), plus some more colonial scandals that will wreck its international reputation (the Royal Hong Kong Police files, Kenya’s calling time on the British military, the special forces atrocities etc).
All of these will combine to show that British subjects are not only governed worse than the countries its rulers habitually denigrate, but that its ruling class is both evil and incompetent, served by largely bad, incompetent and servile people, its cultural history is rather foul, its moralising religious organisations despicable and depraved, and its royal family among the worst criminals of all. Why didn’t the Queen apologise for Canadian indigenous residential schools when even the Pope was forced to (if half-heartedly)? The British Museum is even a stinking outlier in Europe. Perhaps hereditary rule can offer nothing better than delayed calamity.
I’m currently reading Luke Kemp’s Goliath’s Curse. The writing appears to be on the wall. We should expose as much of these crimes as possible in the hope that future generations will be able to read and learn from these.
«we need to cut health and social spending to give trillions more to arms manufacturers, and prepare our children for conscription, to die on the battlefield.»
It seems to me that the plan is to talk loudly about the the Russia! Russia! Russia! and Trump! Trump! Trump! threats to “cut health and social spending” and give something to arms manufacturers but not much and to not prepare for conscription or an actual war.
Conscription is impossible: given low natality rates most young men are only sons or even only children; a situation that happens in most of “The West” and Russia itself. Even the vile looters in the ukrainian government have (or more precisely have had to) resisted USA demands to conscript young men under 23 with the result that the average age of ukrainian soldiers is between 45-50.
Then if the governments of “The West” were really planning for rearmament and war they would surely plan to spend more than the 7% of GDP that the UK was spending for 10-20 years after WW2 or currently being spent by Russia, and they would be planning enormous spending on anti-air weapons, which would mark as potential rebels in the eyes of the USA.
The game is simply to cut wages, social services, etc. because by now in the UK and many other countries of “The West” a large part of the working class are immigrants who are already grateful to have *some* job and anyhow cannot vote.
“The game is simply to cut wages, social services, etc. because by now in the UK and many other countries of “The West” a large part of the working class are immigrants who are already grateful to have *some* job and anyhow cannot vote.”
and also because the country is broke.
I have to believe, that just like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption, that little hammer he used to tunnel his way out is what is working on the public conscience.
I believe I can recall in an interview with Lech Wałęsa, the famous inspiration for Solidarnosc in Poland, who when asked how they succeeded replied “we started with a small hammer on a mighty rock, and carried on until it cracked”
Long live the truth seekers and peace makers.
I know the Integrity Initative and Institute for Statecraft have not been in the news for a while, but this doesn’t mean that they, and the 77th Brigade, are not busily involved in pro-Ukraine anti-Russia covert activities… not least feeding endless lies and disinformation into the mass media via their ‘bought’ journalists. All they were planning when all those I.I. files were leaked seems to be coming to fruition. I guarantee that Donnelly, Lafayedney and their co-conspirators are now pulling more strings than ever.