Novichok: Russia's Antidote to Seafood Poisoning?

UK PM, Theresa May, already in a state of Russophobic arousal because of the alleged nerve-agent poisoning of a retired Russian spy on British Soil, is now ready to follow Tony Bliar by entering into an Anglo-American war of aggression against a small middle-Eastern power, based on a pack of lies: specifically, the allegation by the usual head-chopping suspects that Syrian President Assad is killing his own people with chemical weapons. Examination of the published evidence, however, reveals a total lack of substance. 

For example, US Secretary of Defense, General Mattis, a few hours ago told Congress that "he believes" that there was a chemical attack in Syria, but added that "the United States wants inspectors on the ground soon since the job of collecting evidence becomes more difficult as time passed."

So what Mattis knows about events in Douma at the time of the alleged chlorine gas attack is, apparently, nothing. But for the sake of the pro-war narrative, Mattis "believes" what there is no evidence for believing.

As for Britain's celebrated nerve agent attack on the former Russian Spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, it is interesting to note that the Skripals became ill several hours after a seafood lunch.

That is interesting because the time of onset of symptoms of poisoning relative to the time of their midday meal, i.e., an interval of several hours, is consistent with seafood poisoning, not nerve agent poisoning, which takes effect within seconds of contact.

Seafood poisoning can be due to the presence many different toxins,* including botulinum toxin, which inhibits release of acetylcholine at the neuromuscular junction, thereby causing paralysis and, in severe cases, death by asphyxiation.

Image source

To counter the toxin, it would be reasonable, therefore, in a severe case, to treat patients with an acetylcholine esterase inhibitor to maximize the effect of whatever small quantity of acetylcholine is still being released into the synaptic cleft of the neuromuscular junction. Thus, if the Salisbury Trust Hospital where the Skripals were taken for treatment had requested the assistance of people at Britain's nearby Porton Down chemical and biological weapons research lab, as surely they would have, then they may well have been supplied with a small dose of British-made Novichok,** a most powerful choline esterase inhibitor, to increase the persistence of whatever acetylcholine was being produced at the neuromuscular junction***. 

By inhibiting the action of acetylcholinesterase a nerve agent such

as Novichok increases the persistence of acetyl choline in the cleft

of the neuromuscular junction, thereby countering the inhibition of 

acetyl choline release caused by botulinum toxin. Image source.

If that were the case, then the British Government would have the perfect set-up for the incitement of Russophobia. Specifically, they would have been in a position to supply the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons with blood samples of the afflicted Russians that contained traces of Novichok,  a nerve agent "of a type developed in Russia," as British Government representatives, from Theresa May on down, have repeatedly stated.

Note:
Clearly the account of the Skripals' poisoning offered here is speculative, but it centers on a theory as to how the blood samples from the Skripals could have contained traces of Novichok in a way consistent with the letter to the Times from the Salisbury Trust Hospital's Resident in Emergency Medicine, Stephen Davies. In that letter, Davies said "no patients have experienced nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury:"  a true statement if the Skripals were treated with, not poisoned by, Novichok. Botulinum toxin, it is true, is also a nerve agent, but considered, in the present context, not as a nerve agent but a form of food poisoning. 

————
* Seafoods may contain many kinds of toxin, mostly of a type known as nerve agents, aka WMD's. The various toxins are produced by different microorganisms. Some toxins act as sodium-channel blockers, thereby preventing the spreading wave of electrical depolarization of nerve cell membranes that constitutes a nerve impulse.

A common microbial contaminant of seafood is Clostridium botulinum, which in one survey was found in about one quarter of all fish and shellfish samples tested. In the absence of oxygen, for example in canned fish that has been incompletely sterilized, Clostridium botulinum produces botulinum toxin, the deadliest poison known, ten billionths of a gram being sufficient to cause death.

As an inhibitor of acetylcholine release at the neuromuscular junction, botulinum toxin causes paralysis. The effect of botulinum toxin should thus be countered by nerve agents such as Novichok an inhibitor acetylcholine esterase, which causes tetany, or intense muscle contraction, by preventing break-down of whatever acetylcholine is released at the neuromuscular juction.

** According to Cornell University Chemistry Professor, Dave Collum, Novichok is a simple compound that could be prepared by his third year organic chemistry students. It is almost certain, therefore, that the Porton Down lab would have a supply of Novichok on hand.

*** Zakhari, J.S. et al. 2011. Formulating a new basis for the treatment against botulinum neurotoxin intoxication: 3,4-Diaminopyridine prodrug design and characterization Bioorg. Med. Chem. 9(21):6203-9.

Related:
Craig Murray:Yulia Skripal Is Plainly Under Duress
Moon of Alabama: Yulia Skripal released from Hospital: held in UK police custody.

Are the Skripals in Mortal Danger From the British State?

British Prime Minister, Theresa May, claims that the Russian spy turned British double agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, were the victims of an attempted nerve-agent assassination conducted on British soil on the direct orders of President Putin.

However, the evidence presented by the British state to substantiate its extraordinary allegation is, as we discussed, here, (and here, and here) essentially non-existent. Rather it appears from the circumstances that the incident was staged by the British state to stoke Russophobia. That would explain the timing, in advance of this week's almost certainly fake chemical weapons attack on civilians in Syria by, so Western media assert without evidence or question, Russia's ally, the Government of Syria.

Consistent with that inference is that the two incidents have been acclaimed with joy by warmongers in both London and Washington, DC as justification for NATO intervention in support of ISIS head-choppers in Syria against the Russian-backed Syrian Government.

Who then constitutes the greatest threat to the well-being of the Skripals? Is it the British state that apparently mounted either a fake or a failed nerve agent attack on them, an attack it then vociferously blamed on the Russians? Or is it the Russians who pardoned Sergei Skripal and released him from gaol years ago?

As long as one or both of the Skripals lives, whether under their own name or another, they represent a risk to the government of British Prime Minister, Theresa May, since they might reveal what actually happened in Salisbury when they were, according to the unsubstantiated claim of the British Government, exposed to the deadliest known nerve agent on the direct orders of President Putin.

In that context, the British Government, with assistance from the CIA is offering the Skripals the opportunity to depart the scene for new lives in the US or elsewhere under new identities.

For the Skripals, the opportunity can hardly be appealing. Not only must they sever all ties with family and friends in Russia and elsewhere, but the offer entails obvious personal risk.

Having induced them to depart the scene in name, why would the British state or their friends in America, not have them depart the scene in body and spirit also. Their identities already erased, supposedly for their own good, who would know, or even think to ask, whether they had also been silenced permanently by the hand of a British or American state assassin?

To the Russians, however, the Skripals are more valuable alive than dead as witnesses to a British operation designed to stoke Western Russophobia as a prelude to war. That they are of potential value to the Russians, is of course, the reason why the appear to be at great risk as long as they remain in the hands of the British state.

Related: 

MofA: Trump Asks Russia To Roll Over - It Won't
Craig Murray: Yulia Skripal Is Plainly Under Duress
Peter Ford, Former UK Ambassador to Syria: At the Edge of Armageddon:
RT: Russia accuses US of plan to destroy evidence of fake chemical weapons attack in Syria
Stephen Lendman: The Nerve Agent Saga: Are the Skripals Being Held Against Their Will in Britain?

By Finian Cunningham: Skripal Poison Case Becoming British Hostage Scenario

The Imperialists War Criminals Who Cried "Toxic Gas" Once Too Often

And a reaction to the frenzied reaction of the Americans for bombing faraway peoples:



Related:
RT: US missiles fired at Syria will be shot down, launch sites targeted
Craig Murray: The rush to war
Craig Murray: The four horsemen gallop by
Moon of Alabama: Trump Asks Russia To Roll Over - It Won't
Israel Shamir: The Russians Are Flabbergasted
Michael Savage: Michael Savage Nails It - Why We Are Stumbling into War. SHARE!

FaceBook: A Safe Space for Snow Flakes

NoviJoke: To Russia With Hate

Former British Ambassador, Craig Murray, has made a compelling case that Boris Johnson, Britain's Foreign Secretary, lied in claiming that the poisoning of Russian traitor Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, England, was with a nerve agent, Novichok, "made in Russia."

Johnson's additional claim that the attack was ordered, personally, by Russian President Putin is almost certainly, therefore, as baseless. That such "mad and horrible" allegations against Russia, as they have been described by Russia's Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, are being made by the British Government suggests the existence of a propaganda campaign in preparation for war. For that reason, the Skripal poisoning story deserves close public examination.

Canadian Economics: Lies by the Government Paid for by the Public

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is an agency for the deception of the public at public expense. Almost any snatch of a CBC news broadcast or public policy discussion will, on examination, be found to encapsulate a lie.

A meme currently being foisted on the public by the CBC is that trade protectionism hurts the public by raising prices. The inference being that higher prices due to trade protectionism hurt every Canadian.

That is the lie.

The purpose of trade protectionism is to raise wages of people who will produce the goods that would otherwise be imported from collapsible factories in Bangladesh, Chinese electronics assembly plants with anti-suicide nets, etc. So yes, tariffs raise prices but they also raise incomes of working people. So trade protectionism makes many working people better off at the expense mainly of those in the FIRE and globalized sectors of the economy. Protectionism would also allow Canada to rebuild some of its battered manufacturing sector that was undermined by NAFTA and devastated by free trade with the sweat-shop economies.

Yes protectionism results in retaliatory measures, but what do low-wage economies buy from Canada? Not much. Seventy-seven point four percent of Canadian exports go to the US and Mexico which are largely free of protectionist tariffs against Canadian goods. The rest consists in those incredibly cheap  shoes and shirts, and omputers and car parts that Canadians used to make for one another but now buy in large quantities from exploiters of sweated Asian labor.

In fact, a protected US Market to which Canadians have free access by virtue of the NAFTA agreement would provide huge opportunities for Canadian manufacturing.

UK Backs off Russia Guilty of Nerve Agent Poisoning

Metro, April 4, 2018: The Foreign Office has deleted a tweet blaming Russia for the Salisbury attack after UK scientists announced they had not verified the source of the nerve agent used. The Government had posted a message online that stated the Kremlin was responsible. It said: ‘Analysis by world-leading experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down made clear that this was a military-grade Novichok nerve agent produced in Russia.’ But yesterday Gary Aitkenhead, from the Government’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down, said the role of his lab was not to work out where the agent came from. He added the Government’s conclusion that it was highly likely to be Russian was based on ‘a number of other sources.’ The Foreign Office confirmed it had taken the tweet down because it had been an inaccurate summary of comments made by the UK’s ambassador to Russia.

Read more

Independent, April 4, 2018:

The inability of Porton Down to ascribe blame to Russia means that intelligence is now the key factor in the accusation against the Kremlin. And such overwhelming dependence on intelligence, most of it unknown to the public, has inevitably led to comparison with the fake intelligence which was used to justify the Iraq invasion.

It is also perhaps inevitable that Mr Johnson would be in the centre of the controversy. In an interview two weeks ago he had stated that Porton Down scientists were “absolutely categorical” that the novichok came from Russia: “I asked the guy myself, I said ‘are you sure?’ And he said ‘there’s no doubt’.”


But “the guy”, Gary Aitkenhead, the chief executive of the DSTL (Defence Science and Technology Laboratory) at Porton Down, was pretty clear that although the scientists had ascertained the agent was novichok, “we haven’t identified the precise source”.

The foreign secretary’s aides are insisting that he was misunderstood and his words have been taken out of context. But at the same time, the Russian embassy gleefully pointed out, the Foreign Office deleted a tweet from last month saying that Porton Down had established that the novichok used in the attack definitely came from Russia

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It's Not The Crime, It's The Cover-Up:

Moon of Alabama, April 4, 2018: When a scandal breaks, the discovery of an attempt to cover up is often regarded as even more reprehensible than the original deeds.

The British government is trying to cover-up the lies it made with its false allegations against Russia. The cover-up necessitates new lies some of which we expose below.

Yesterday the head of the British chemical weapon laboratory in Porton Down stated that the laboratory can not establish that the poison used in the alleged 'Novichok' attack in Salisbury was produced by Russia. This was a severe blow to the British government allegations of Russian involvement in the poisoning of Sergej and Yulia Skripal.

Now the British government tries to hide that it said that the poison used in the Salisbury was 'produced in Russia' and that Porton down had proved that to be the case. The government aligned media are helping to stuff the government lies down the memory hole.

We all need to make sure that the new lies get exposed and that the attempts to change the record fail.

Yesterday the British Foreign Office deleted this from its Twitter account:

The March 22 tweet was part of a now interrupted thread which summarized a briefing on the UK government's response to the Salisbury incident given by the British Ambassador to Russia, Dr Laurie Bristow, to the international diplomatic community in Moscow.

After the silent scrubbing of the record was publicly questioned the Foreign Office admittedthat it deleted the tweet:

After it emerged on Wednesday that the tweet had been deleted, the Foreign Office said the post was removed because it "did not accurately report" the words of Laurie Bristow, the UK's ambassador to Russia, which the tweet was supposed to be quoting.

Hmm - fool me once ...

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Will the UK Diplomat Booted By the Lying Blair Government Bring Down the Lying May Government?

Former UK Ambassador, Craig Murray, who called out UK Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson for lying about the poisoning, in Salisbury England, of former Russian spy, Sergei Skrypal, and his daughter Yulia, has returned to the attack with three new pieces posted at his blog:

April 3, 2018:
Breaking News: Porton Down to Make Public Statement

April 4, 2018:
Johnson and May Hide as their Lies Dissolve

April 4, 2018:
The Poison in our Body Politic

We may yet see a man dismissed from the service of the British Government by a lying Blair government, play a critical role in the dismissal of Theresa May's lying government from the service of the people.

Trump under investigation by the man who lied the US into the Iraq war that killed a million people

Skripal Poisonings: Putin to Britain — You Poisoned Our Citizens

Daily Mail, March 28, 2018: Russia has demanded that London provide proof that British spies did not carry out the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that their analysis of the assassination attempt has them to believe in 'a possible involvement in it of the British intelligence services'.

The Ministry says that in the absence of proof of British innocence, Moscow will regard the incident as an attempt on the lives of Russian citizens on foreign soil. 

Since the British statements about the poisoning have consisted in a combination of what we know to be lies, implausible inferences, and threats which taken together make little sense, unsupported by any results of a supposedly ongoing police investigation, Russia's position has plausibility.

Skripal Provocation Aimed at Increasing NATO Military Budget’ – Russian Deputy FM [After 3:10]
in 

Furious China ramps up support for Russia on Skripal, calls West’s actions “outrageous”

And in another report,

Pathetic Britain, No. 79: Canadian Citizen, Lauren Southern, Banned for Life From Entry to UK for Exposing Discrimination Against Christians

Lauren Southern, a Canadian citizen, was barred from entry to the UK on March 13. She was held under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act. A notice of refusal to enter stated that Southern’s actions in Luton on a previous visit to England presented “a threat to the fundamental interests of society and public policy of the United Kingdom.”

Her crime? She'd handed out flyers emblazoned with messages like “Allah is a gay God” and “Allah is trans” in Luton. According to news reports, these were "racist" flyers, although in what way they were racist is not clear, for although they might be considered anti-Muslim, Islam is not a race. 

Her intention, apparently, was to demonstrate that British law discriminates against Christians whose god is routinely mocked and insulted in the media and entertainments industry.

Her expulsion from Britain proves her point. Britain enforces Sharia law but treats Christianity with contempt, a fact that brings to mind this comment by Dr. Daniels, aka Theodore Dalrymple.

Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

Anthony Daniels: Frontpage Magazine interview (August 31, 2005).

InSainsbury's: Non-Easter Easter Eggs, At Easter

Breitbart reports that:

Pro-EU supermarket chain Sainsbury’s has opted to swap the term ‘Easter eggs’ for ‘Chocolate eggs’, telling customers this is a more accurate description of the product. 

So when will they opt to swap the term "Halal" or "Kosher" chicken for "throat-slashed" chicken, which would be  "a more accurate description of the product"?

 Don't bet on that happening any time soon.

Which could explain why their share price is down the drain.

A boycott by Easter-egg lovers could flush the whole Christaphobic, Jew- and Muslim-arse-licking operation down the tubes.

Related:
Paul Craig Roberts: How Our Country Was Stolen

Salisbury Terror Nerve Gas Attack: How We Know Putin Did It

Theresa May, House of Commons, March 12, 2017:

Re: The poisoning of Segei and Yulia Skirpal in Salisbury, England
Based on the positive identification of this chemical agent by world-leading experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down; our knowledge that Russia has previously produced this agent and would still be capable of doing so; Russia's record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations*; and our assessment that Russia views some defectors as legitimate targets for assassinations; the Government has concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible for the act against Sergei and Yulia Skripal.

Mr. Speaker, there are therefore only two plausible explanations for what happened in Salisbury on the 4th of March.

Either this was a direct act by the Russian state against our country.

Or the Russian government lost control of this potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others.

So folks, no actual evidence, but still it's best just to place your trust in the politicians who in your hearts you know do what’s absolutely best for you, like, for example, bringing on the next ME war, with potential for escalation to World War III.

The fact that the incident in Salisbury occurred days before the Russian Presidential election has of course nothing to do with it.

The fact that the incident in Salisbury occurred just a couple of months before Russia is to host the World cup has of course nothing to do with it.

The fact that the incident in Salisbury occurred in the months leading up to completion of the NordStream II gas line to deliver Russian natural gas to North Western Europe, a project that US interests still seek to block to the benefit of US exporters of liquefied natural gas, a surplus byproduct of oil fracking, has of course nothing to do with it.

The fact that Trump is gunning for a war on a Russia-backed Iran for which the incident in Salisbury may yet provide a pretext, is not to be thought of.

The fact that Putin has no reason to seek a war for which the incident in Salisbury could so readily serve as a pretext, at a time when Russia and China are still racing to surpass the US in arms both quantitatively and qualitatively, is of course irrelevant.

No, clearly, Putin decided that since now was the worst possible time to murder a Russian spy — a man already pardoned by the Russian state — using a terror weapon with Russia’s signature on it, on foreign soil, then this was, in fact, the best time since no one would believe the Russians to be that damn stupid. Trouble for Putin is that everyone is so damn stupid that they really do think the Russians are that damn stupid.

* May defends use of drones to kill British terrorists overseas

* Tracking US drone strikes and other covert actions in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia

Related:

The Star: Canada’s Russia policy raises many questions (such as why expel diplomats in the complete absence of evidence of wrongdoing? Because it's all bollocks, that's why.)

Yawn: British Government Lied Again

By Craig Murray
(Reproduced with permission)

CraigMurray.org.uk, 22 Mar, 2018: Evidence submitted by the British government in court today proves, beyond any doubt, that Boris Johnson has been point blank lying about the degree of certainty Porton Down scientists have about the Skripals being poisoned with a Russian “novichok” agent.

Yesterday in an interview with Deutsche Welle Boris Johnson claimed directly Porton Down had told him they positively identified the nerve agent as Russian:

Pilger: The Skripal Poisoning: A Constructed Drama

Related: 
Moon of Alabama: Russian Scientists Explain 'Novichok' - High Time For Britain To Come Clean
Zero Hedge: Attack Against Nord Stream 2 Renewed with Vigor: Whose Interests Does It Meet?
John Ward: SKRIPAL ANALYSIS: the collective security anti-Brexit motive is beginning to look disturbingly likely
George Gallaway: Salisbury incident: Cui Bono (who benefits)
Info. Clearing House: US Planning a Terrorist False Flag Chemical Attack in Syria: Russia Says It Will Respond
RT: And now the US acts to block Russian gas to Europe: 
Israel Shamir: Another View of Salisbury Accident (Incident?)
Thierry Meyssan: Four days to declare a Cold War
Patrick Buchanan: Did Putin Order the Salisbury Hit?
Al Jaz: UK to send sample to OPCW after nerve-agent attack on former spy
Russia Insider: Russia Demands British Gov't Apology for Salisbury Claims (LOL)
Information Clearing House: Russia’s Reaction to the Insults of the West is Political Suicide
Craig Murray: On Being a Dissenting Voice in 2018
Craig Murray: Russian to Judgement
Philip Giraldi: Russia Gate Comes to England
Moon of Alabama: "No Patients Have Experienced Symptoms Of Nerve Agent Poisoning In Salisbury"
Moon of Alabama: Guardian Rips-Off Goebbels - Fascist Propaganda For Better Anti-Russian Smears
Moon of Alabama: The British Government's 'Novichok' Drama Was Written By Whom?

Posts From the Past: Carbon, Climate, and Hot Air

2019:

Global Warming: No Need to Panic Yet?

2018:

Saving the World Through Sloth, Ineptitude, Hornswoggling, and the Carbon Tax

The Phony "Scientific" American Magazine, Attacks the Phony Science Guy, in Defense of a Phony Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

2017:

Why the All-Electric Family Car Is Something the Average Family Will Likely Never Own

2016:

The Trouble With Climate Science

2015:

MIT Meteorology Prof, Science Magazine and the Pope Concur: The Reality of Human Caused Climate Change Is an Article of Religious Faith

Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part I: Carbon Dioxide Is Not a Greenhouse Gas

Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part II: Ecosystem Disruption

Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part III: Induced Stupidity and the Decline of the West

Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part IV: Reversing the Trend

Climate Science RIP

Stop Climate Change: Shoot the Rich

How Justin Trudeau Could Save the World from Yet Another Futile, Failed, UN Climate Conference, But Won't 

(Actually, he did, sort of, by introducing a carbon tax, but without eliminating all the other schemes and bureaucratic controls, or providing for a countervailing duty on products from countries without a carbon tax. So it won't work.)

2013:

Extreme Weather? Don't Worry. It's Normal

A Carbon Tax: The Intelligent Way to Limit Greenhouse Gas Emissions

2012:

Nulius in verba: On the word of no one

Per ardua ad astra: Why not?

2011

How stupid people win debates

The State of Climate Science: Have We Passed Peak Civilization?

Skripal Tripal

The other day, the media reported that British intelligence services "now believe" that Sergei Skripal, a Russian spy, double agent, triple agent, whatever, and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned with a nerve agent taken from Russia in Yulia's luggage when she traveled to Britain to visit with her father.

Now, however, "Intelligence sources believe Mr Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter could have been sprayed with the nerve agent from a remote-controlled drone hovering above them as they sat on a bench in Salisbury."

Novichoc: From England, the Strange Tale of an Alleged Assassination Attempt With an Alleged Russian Nerve Gas on the Explicit Order of Vladimir Putin

Last week, Sergei Skripal, a Russian spy, turned by the Brits, exposed as a traitor and jailed by Russia, then pardoned and released under a spy swap deal, and now living in England, was supposedly the target of an assassination attempt by exposure to a "military-grade" nerve agent "of a type," as British authorities from the Prime Minister on down repeatedly assert,  "developed by Russia," the attempt almost certainly conducted, so UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has stated, on the orders of Vladimir Putin.

The incident has gained massive news coverage, mostly to the detriment of the character of Russians, particularly Vladimir Putin. Yet exactly how the alleged poisoning of Skripal and also his daughter, Yulia, who was visiting from Russia, was carried out has not been revealed.

Novichick May's Military-Grade Big Lie

Re: The nerve gas attack on a Russian spy in Britain.

U.K. Prime Minister, Thereason May,  referred to the British government’s

knowledge that Russia has previously produced this agent (i.e., novichok, the agent said to have poisoned Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England)  and would still be capable of doing so”

On these grounds, she claimed that only two scenarios are possible:

Either this was a direct act by the Russian State against our country. Or the Russian government lost control of this potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others.

Which raises the question: how stupid does she take the public to be?

UK Nerve Gas Attack: Theresa May's March Madness

A Russian spy, turned by the Brits, jailed by the Russians, pardoned by the Russians and released in a spy swap, living in England, is subjected to an alleged nerve-gas attack, prompting UK Prime Minister Theresa May to declare Russia guilty of an attempt on the life of the said spy.

On what evidence?

Three things:

Saving the World Through Sloth, Ineptitude, Hornswoggling, and the Carbon Tax

Many people fear that human activity is changing the climate in ways that will prove catastrophic. Others hold that fear to be overblown or entirely mistaken. Some even claim that because of the rising concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the world is becoming a better, more productive place. For example, because of fertilization by carbon dioxide, crop yields are rising, while because of the gentle carbon dioxide-induced warming of the planet, crop lands are extending Northward, while rainfall is increasing in the dry lands to the South of the Sahara. As a result, starvation in the poorest parts of the world is being held at bay.

The disagreement about climate change has long been intense, and positions have become deeply entrenched. The scientific debate has become rancorous. Scientists have been accused of data manipulation and fraud. Scientists have sued one another for libel. And a leading scientist recently quit the climate science field because of its "craziness."

In the public domain, the debate has become highly politicized. Former US President, Barack Obama, has claimed that climate change "is a threat that may define the contours of this century more than any other" (Whatever exactly the contours of a century may be.). Former US Vice President Al Gore has likened denial of climate change to racism. NASA's former top climate scientist and Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, has been arrested repeatedly as a participant in protests against pipeline development, tar sands development, and coal mining.

Why the Left Wants a Non-White America

Hubert Collins, American Renaissance, March 11, 2017

Less white means more left.

A recent exchange between Tucker Carlson of Fox News and Univision anchorman Jorge Ramos—“This is not a white country”—marks a significant turning point: Suddenly people on national television are talking about the end of white America, the rising tide of color, and what demographic change really means. White advocates may owe Señor Ramos a “thank you” for his forthright Hispanic chauvinism, which forces whites to think seriously about dispossession. Too many whites would rather look the other way, and since Fox News won’t (yet) invite Jared Taylor to talk about it, Señor Ramos will have to do.

Entirely aside from his dreams of reconquista, Jorge Ramos and others on the left want America to become non-white so that it moves further to the left, so that Democrats can win more elections. To put it simply: Less white means more left. Leftists, particularly Hispanic ones, talk about this openly.

Read more

What the advocates of less white want is MACA, which is to say: Make America Colored Again. It's simply race war driven by racist blacks and Hispanics. Political ideology doesn't come into it except insofar as the left is anti-white.

And in Africa:

News 24: South African Pol.: We are cutting the throat of whiteness.

Stockman Celebrates The End Of The Goldman Sachs Regency At The White House

Zero Hedge, March 7, 2018: The financial commentariat and the robo-machines are all in a tizzy this morning because Gary Cohn up and quit. But we say good riddance: The man gave Trump bad advice on nearly every single issue---trade, taxes, fiscal policy and the Fed.

We didn't make any bones about that viewpoint during our appearance on Fox Business this AM. When Maria Bartiromo asked us about Cohn's departure, our reply was: Hallelujah, the Goldman Sachs Regency in the White House is finally over!

The fact is, we do have a trade crisis, but Gary Cohn and the Wall Street pseudo-free traders don't care and never have. That's because they fiercely support a perverted, self-serving monetary regime that systematically and massively inflates financial assets, even as it strip mines and deflates the main street economy.

As we have been pointing out in this series, there is a perverse symbiosis between the Fed and the Dirty Float central banks of the 10 major countries (China, Vietnam, Mexico, Japan, etc), which account for 90% of the nation's $810 billion trade deficit (2017). Together they have ripped the guts out of the US industrial economy---effectively sending jobs and production abroad and cash flow and liquidated capital to Wall Street.

For its part, the Fed has monkey-hammered US competitiveness. That's the result of its insensible 2.00% inflation policy, which has fatally inflated nominal dollar wages in a world market drowning in cheap labor priced in artificially under-valued currencies.

At the same time, its massive interest rate repression and price-keeping operations in the stock market have turned the C-suites of corporate America into financial engineering joints. So doing, they have slashed real net business investment by nearly 3o% since the turn of the century, by 20% from the 2007 pre-crisis peak and, actually, to a level in 2016 that barely exceeded real net investment two decades earlier in 1997.

Meanwhile, the C-suites shuttled upwards of $15 trillion of cash flow and debt capacity during the last decade alone into stock buybacks, vanity M&A deals and excess dividends and recaps. As we said in today's Fox interview, America's business leaders will not stop strip-mining their companies in order to juice Wall Street and goose their own stock options until they are taken to the woodshed by a stern task-master at the Fed.

By that we mean a central bank that is willing to get out of the financial asset price propping and pegging business, and to thereby permit the kind of stock market collapse that would finally expose the folly of corporate America's endless financial engineering. Indeed, at this point nothing else will stop them except being run out of their jobs for massive dissipation of corporate resources and piling their balance sheets high with unproductive debt.

Yet until there is a clean sweep at the Fed and a purging of today's crop of financial engineers and speculators from the C-suites, there is no possible way to reverse the nation's faltering trade accounts. Doing so would require a major revival of investment in facilities, equipment, technology, people and business innovation that simply isn't in the cards in today's casino.

Yesterday we mentioned that the US has incurred a massive and widening trade deficit for 43 years running, and that the cumulative shortfall totals $15 trillion. But much of that reflects long-ago dollars that have since been inflated away by the Fed's relentless effort to stimulate more inflation.

Accordingly, if that 43-year string of trade deficits is re-priced in 2016 dollars of purchasing power, the horror shows is just all the more stunning. To wit, the US economy has incurred nearly $19 trillion of cumulative trade deficits since 1975 in today's purchasing power.

Is there any wonder that US manufacturing output is still 2.5% below its pre-crisis level of late 2007, and that total industrial production including energy, mining and utilities has barely returned to the flat line?

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The Strange Death of Liberal Canada

After three dud leaders in a row, Martin, Dion, and Ignatieff, the Liberal Party of Canada made what must have seemed at the time the only possible choice: they picked Justin Trudeau, the man with the big name, the good looks and the lovely family, to lead the party.

Electorally, the decision was a great success. The Liberals finally regained what is the prime objective of every Liberal, namely, power.

For the country, however, as we set forth in an earlier post, it has been a disaster.

Trudeau has not only announced the abolition of the Canadian nation, while declaring immigrants more worthy of Canada than the citizenry, but gone full social justice warrior. He has filled half his cabinet seats with women, based not on merit, but on feminist principle. He has declared war on anti-black racism, as though (a) racism is not as Canadian as maple syrup, and (b) black racism was ever a significant issue in a country with hardly any black people. He presides over a government with a state broadcaster that devotes much of its radio programming to ridiculing the President of the country that accounts for more than two-thirds of Canada's export trade. He has presided over legislation that compels speech, stupid speech at that, which is to say the use of made-up pronouns to refer to a largely invented community of transgender persons. He has personally and publicly insulted a user of the English language for not using the silly made-up word: "peoplekind" in place of "mankind.*" He has ripped off the Canadian taxpayer for an expensive Caribbean family holiday, as the guest of a registered Government lobbyist. His Government has granted a posthumous award of the Order of Canada to Barry Sherman, a suspect in a murder case, who donated to the Liberal Party while a registered Government lobbyist.

To the average member of the Liberal Party of Canada, none of this matters, obviously: power, virtue signalling, and sneering at a Republican American president justifies almost anything. But with Trudeau's just-completed pointless week-long visit to India, his family and an Indian chef from Vancouver in tow, one thing has changed everything. Not only did Trudeau manage to insult his Indian hosts by publicly associating with a Sikh nationalist/separatist assassin, who was even invited to pose for photographs with Trudeau's wife, but unforgivably, he made a complete ass of himself, posing in multiple Indian-themed, fancy dress outfits: thereby resembling, as one commentator remarked, a chameleon in a paint factory.

The outpouring of ridicule must be more than even the most hardened Canadian Liberal could tolerate: Trudeau's time is surely up. To fill his place, another dud will almost certainly be found, Chrystia Freeland, perhaps — unless, that is, the Liberals get a momentary grip on reality and ask Jean Chrétien, the best small 'c' conservative prime minister that Canada ever had, to resume command. Indeed, Chrétien did promise that, like England's William Ewart Gladstone, he would return in his eighties. Either way, Trudeau's Indian pratfall, surely signals that Liberal Canada is on its deathbed.

PostScript:
March 3, 2017

And Now This:

B.C. Liberal MP now says he didn’t invite Atwal

So Trudeau's pathetic excuse for inviting a Sikh separatist convicted of attempted assassination against an Indian cabinet minister, turns out to be entirely false. 

Time for Trudeau to go. Now.

PostScript:
March 1, 2017

As Terry Glavin reports in NaPo, today, not only has Trudeau reiterated the allegation initially made by an unnamed Canadian security official that India was somehow responsible for the fact that Canadian officials had invited a Canadian Sikh separatist/terrorist/assassin (now reformed, so he claims) to two official functions with the Trudeaus during their family tour of India, but that:

With all the attention paid to a former Khalistani terrorist getting an invitation to that Canadian High Commission gala last Thursday, it was barely mentioned anywhere that a senior executive of India’s venerable Outlook Magazine was brusquely disinvited from the event, while among Trudeau’s official media retinue was an Indo-Canadian journalist who had greeted Modi during his 2015 visit to Canada with placards that read “Modi is a Terrorist” and “India out of Khalistan.”

Khalistan is the name of the theocratic ethnostate a small minority of Sikh separatists want to carve out of India’s Punjab state. Also mercifully overlooked last week: a map of India displayed at last Thursday night’s High Commission party in New Delhi omitted the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir — the shellshocked, heavily militarized Muslim-majority Indian state that Pakistan claims as its own territory. Imagine the Indian High Commission in Ottawa throwing a party and showing off a huge map of Canada with Quebec missing, and you get the picture.

Bizarre, indeed.

—————
* The English word "man" is from the old English term for a human being, male or female, the sexes distinguished by the prefix "wer" for male, "wif" for female. Modern English has dropped the male prefix, but not the female prefix, the latter having mutated from "wif" to "wo."

Related:
Globe and Mail: Trudeau rejects allegation India's higher chickpea tariffs a result of his controversial trip
Globe and Mail: India denies role in Atwal controversy during Trudeau visit
The Spectator: Justin Trudeau takes his Captain Snowflake act to India
 Globe and Mail: Tories demand proof that India was behind Jaspal Atwal’s presence during Trudeau’s trip
Times of India: Why Trudeau’s disaster trip may trigger a reset in India-Canada ties
Times of India: Why Trudeau’s disaster trip may trigger a reset in India-Canada ties
The Star: Federal claim of Indian interference in Trudeau event is ‘dangerously irresponsible,’ says Andrew Scheer
John Ivison: The Indian government removed Jaspal Atwal from its blacklist. Why?

Globe & Mail: Trudeau’s stumbles in India: a crafty foreign plot to let the Liberals shoot themselves in the foot?

Andrew Coyne: L’affaire Atwal: the novelty is only that they did it on Indian soil
Canadian map displayed at Trudeau event awards parts of Kashmir to Pakistan

The Star: Patronizing Trudeau in India goes Ghandi

Canada’s spy agency was warned about convicted terrorist Jaspal Atwal’s appearance with Justin Trudeau

How Justin Trudeau’s India trip went from bad to ‘Bengal Bungle’ (while blaming  it on the Government of India)

Indian commentators find Trudeaus' Indian dress tacky, fake and annoying
Former Liberal cabinet minister blasts Trudeau over attempted murderer's Delhi dinner invite
Information about Surrey gunman at Trudeau dinner passed to Canadian officials earlier this month

Is Trudeau ‘hobnobbing’ with terrorists? Why India doesn’t trust Canada all that much

Trudeaus make chipatis in Amritsar during pointless India trip
Liberals have a high tolerance level for convicted Sikh terrorists 

More trouble for Trudeau India trip over invitation error, reports of Modi snub
Atwal fiasco dogs Trudeau; PM pledges a 'conversation' with MP responsible

Justin Trudeau in the real world
Justin Trudeau's India visit deemed a 'slow-moving train wreck' amid claims he was 'snubbed'

MALCOLM: Trudeau breaking bread with would-be assassin in India?

Why India is being really rude to Justin Trudeau

India-Canada relations at ‘rock bottom’ after Trudeau invitation error, ex-Liberal cabinet minister says

OTTAWA—The botched party invitation extended to a convicted attempted murderer by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office has plunged Canada-India relations to an all-time low, says a former Liberal cabinet minister.

“Mr. Trudeau can perhaps salvage our relationship, but I think it hit rock bottom with this. It was already sliding downwards from the moment they got to India,” Ujjal Dosanjh, a former Liberal health minister, ex-premier of British Columbia and one-time provincial attorney general, told The Canadian Press on Thursday.

Dosanjh accused his old federal party of being too close to Sikh separatists even before Trudeau’s Sunday arrival in India. But the invitation issued to Jaspal Atwal for a reception on the India trip cemented that, he added.

Trudeau’s office has said the invitation was a mistake and was rescinded as soon as he was discovered on the guest list for a New Delhi event. However, Atwal showed up at a reception earlier in the week in Mumbai and was photographed with Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, the prime minister’s wife.

Dosanjh said he couldn’t believe what he was seeing when he saw the photograph. 

Anti-Semitism, a Jewish Secret Weapon?

Anti-Semitism is good for the Jews apparently:

YouTube Won’t Ban Neo-Nazi Group Chanting ‘Gas the K**kes, Race War Now’

Gotta maintain the appearance of eternal victimhood at the hands of irrational haters somehow.

Florida School Shooting. Who Are You Gonna Believe?

Brasschek TV: Two shooters at Florida school

deNiall Ferguson: The West is Not Dying, It Just Looks That Way

First published by CanSpeccy on Wordpress: February 6, 2014: 

According to Niall Ferguson, there’s little wrong with the West that cannot be fixed with some tweaking of institutions.

If Asia is rising while the West stagnates, that is the inevitable consequence of Asia having adopted the institutions that made the West great, namely, the competitive market economy, science, property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic.

If the West seems to be declining, it is, says Ferguson, because our institutions of democracy, capitalism, the rule of law, and civil society have degenerated.

Such arguments are bunk. As we stated elsewhere:

If the institutions of democracy in the West are degenerating, those of the extraordinarily dynamic China are essentially non-existent. If the rule of law in America is increasingly the “rule of lawyers,” in China the rule of law is a concept barely even understood. If free and fair competition in Western economies has diminished as capital has been concentrated in fewer hands, China’ state capitalism is the complete antithesis of the free and fair market that underlay Adam Smith’s invisible hand. As for the the institutions of civil society, the West is still incomparably free compared with China where even association for the purpose of religious worship is prohibited.

So while Western institutions are in decline, China’s are absolute crap. Yet still China’s economy booms as the West stagnates. Clearly, then, there’s more to Western economic decline than the inadequacy of some vaguely defined sets of institutions.

In fact, the West is undergoing willful destruction by fools motivated by the unattainable vision of a global empire based on a the bizarre notion that the Western model of diversity-loving liberal democracy is the natural endpoint for all social and political development.

But like the Communists of old, who though professing a belief in historical inevitability felt it necessary to push history forward by the most bloody revolutionary methods, so today, the liberal globalists, while asserting the worldwide triumph of liberal democracy, seek to ensure that outcome by compelling Western nations to commit suicide, replacing themselves with racial and cultural groups quite alien to the liberal democratic ideology the globalists claim has already achieved global acceptance.

UK Settlers

The absurdity of Ferguson’s refusal to acknowledge the West’s Gadarene rush to self-destruction is noted in Ricardo Duchesne’s review of Ferguson’s Civilization: The Six Ways the West Beat the Rest.

He [Ferguson] is clearly worried by the lack of assimilation of Muslims in Europe, and the key role being played at universities and elsewhere by Islamic centres. He tabulates that if the current Muslim population of the UK continues to grow at the current rate, its share of the total population would pass 50 per cent in 2050 (p. 290). So, it looks like the West needs to show resolve on Muslim immigration and assimilation … by teaching kids Western liberal arts? I doubt a population built on mass migration from non-Western lands would be enthusiastic about Elizabethan England, Homer, Chaucer, Aquinas, or even Shakespeare. He says that ‘mass immigration is not necessarily the solvent of a civilization, if the migrants embrace, and are encouraged to embrace the values of the civilization to which they are moving’ (p. 290). It is worth noting that only westerners are inviting resterners to come to their homelands; there is no ‘reconvergence’ whatsoever in this respect; this is one killer app Asia does not care for. If current trends continue, the West will become a less homogenous civilization, whereas China, Japan, and India will remain uniquely native.

And even if the mass of immigrants to Europe could be Westernized culturally, it would remain the case that the European nations as racial entities quite distinct from those of the countries from which Third World immigrants derive, are being exterminated by policies that not only promote immigration, but suppress the fertility of the indigenous population, and destroy the self-confidence of Western youth by inculcating the belief that Western civilization is a shameful heritage.

Understandably, Ferguson denies the destruction of the European nations by the simple expedient of ignoring this monstrous reality, for there is no rational basis of denial. Irrationally, liberals, if pressed, are ready enough to deny the genocide of the European peoples by simultaneously insisting that racial diversity is good while denying that the indigenous peoples of Europe have their own unique racial identities.

It is now clear that the World will not accept Western hegemony and its attendant culture of decadence because, first, it does not appeal to most of humanity, and second, the West lacks the military might to force it upon the World.

On the contrary, the mass of people migrating from East to the West to raise their standard of living are increasingly inclined to deride Western civilization, whether they be highly philoprogenitive Muslims settlers in Britain or Asian cultural supremacists at Yale University. Moreover, the limited capacity of America’s military has been clearly demonstrated in Iraq and Afghanistan, and confirmed by the the decision to back away from attempting the military overthrow of the unliberal and undemocratic governments of Syria and Iran.

Liberalism, the ideology that underlies the NeoCon drive for US-led Western-dominated global empire, is a death cult, and while we are nowhere near the End of History, we are nearing the point of no recovery for the Western nations.

The antidote to liberalism is conservatism. Conservatism is about reproducing your own people, not replacing it with people from elsewhere, it is about upholding one’s literary, religious and cultural history, not denigrating it as racism and supremacism.

Today, the denial of conservative values amounts to a program of Western self-genocide. It is a project fueled by hatred, the most powerful of political motivations: the self-hatred of brainwashed “anti-racist” Europeans and the ambition of opportunist settler immigrants. It is a program destroying the West by robbing Western youth of opportunity, ambition and hope.

Related:

CanSpeccy: The Rise of the West: Niall Ferguson’s Six “Killer Apps.” How Are They Working For Us Now?

Canspeccy: Niall Ferguson: The Decline of the West Explained – Not

Niall Ferguson: The Decline of the West Explained – Not

First published by CanSpeccy on Wordpress, June 20, 2013

In his latest book, pot boiler, extended magazine article in hard covers for 28 bucks, whatever, Niall Ferguson sets out to explain why the nations of the West, so long dominant in scientific and technical skills, wealth and power, are now stagnating economically as China and much of the rest of the Third World rise in power and prosperity at an unprecedented rate.

The trouble, thinks Feguson, is the problem that Adam Smith identified as the cause of China’s economic stagnation in the 18th century: it is, he argues, our institutions. Our institutions of democracy, capitalism, the rule of law, and civil society, he says, have degenerated, resulting in the the concentration of wealth, the emergence of monopolies, a decline in educational standards and other ills that have resulted in a loss of Western competitiveness.

In form, Ferguson’s book is reminiscent of those vaguely interesting and generally incoherent lectures to which so many have been exposed during undergraduate education: a few interesting facts and ideas with many loose ends, leaving unlimited scope for further debate and literary output.

But as an account of the stagnation and relative decline of the West, Ferguson’s effort is almost entirely futile other than as an exercise in misdirection, distraction and cover-up.

If the institutions of democracy in the West are degenerating, those of the extraordinarily dynamic China are essentially non-existent. If the rule of law in America is increasingly the “rule of lawyers,” in China it is a concept barely even understood. If free and fair competition in Western economies has diminished as capital has been concentrated in fewer hands, China’ state capitalism is the complete antithesis of the free and fair market that underlay Adam Smith’s invisible hand. As for the the institutions of civil society, the West is still incomparably free compared with China where even association for the purpose of religious worship is prohibited.

So while Western institutions are in decline, China’s are absolute crap. Yet still China’s economy booms as the West stagnates. Clearly, then, there’s more to Western economic decline than the inadequacy of some vaguely defined sets of institutions.

To discover what has stultified the West, it is necessary to consider what drives economic expansion, and the answer to that is quite simple: increased investment and production. But you cannot have increased investment and production unless there are markets for the increased output, and there will only be markets for the increased output if the new production is competitively priced. But how can new output in the West be competitively priced when the legally mandated minimum wage in America and Europe is between ten and twenty or more times the rate paid factory workers in the Third World?

This is the simple, obvious brute fact that explains Western economic stagnation, to which Niall Ferguson, like any other tenured professor at a top US or UK university, must carefully avoid drawing attention.

The consequences of the fact of Western wage uncompetitiveness with the Third World are as obvious as this one basic fact itself.

Once the Uraguay Round of the Gatt (which led to the creation of the World Trade Organization) was signed by the Western states in 1994, the Western economies were on the skids.

It took a while, naturally, to export Western capital and technology, accumulated through the sweat of generations, to the Third World.

Collapsed Bangladesh factory where Loblaws of Canada (62% owned by 

billionaire George Weston) outsourced manufacture of its "Joe Fresh" line 

of apparel. More than one thousand workers died in the collapse, but as 

George Weston remarked, they need the work. Garment workers in Canada

 presumably do not need the work, or if they do, would be much more 

expensive to hire.

It took a while, naturally, to construct the factories, build the research centers, train the engineers, biotechnologists, the computer scientists, and the millions of production line workers in China, India, Bangladesh and a hundred other countries before the Third World was in a position to take the jobs of tens of millions of Western workers.

But the system’s in place now and the jobs have been bleeding away rapidly during the last ten years, the loss masked in part by housing bubbles that stimulated the construction industry, which is among the few that cannot be off-shored wholesale.

But now the real estate bubbles have burst or are bursting and the shrinking Western economies are plagued by deflation, falling incomes, rapidly rising welfare costs and unemployment, and ominous rumblings of social discontent. Add to the mix mass immigration of culturally disparate elements, which displaces from the workforce the least competent members of the indigenous population, and you have a recipe for both economic decline and revolution.

Hyperventilating about the degeneration of our social, legal and political institutions or getting everyone to join the Lions Club won’t solve the problem created by the treason of our elites, who have sold out the working people of America and Europe for the benefit of the money power, which has gained enormous profits through the success of globalized corporations such as IBM, Apple, Microsoft, and many others.

The only remaining question of real interest is whether the money power will get away with the genocide of the Western nations in its bid for a system of global financial feudalism. And an answer to that question, we can be sure, will not be made available by Niall Ferguson or any other member of the academic elite until such time as the question has become entirely academic.