90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

The Trump Dossier and the Poisoning of Sergei Skripal

More than a year ago, in the small British town of Salisbury, agents of the GRU (military intelligence of Russia) poisoned a former Russian double agent and former GRU colonel, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, who came from Moscow to visit her father. (For simplicity, we will use the well established abbreviations of the GRU, KGB, etc., even if their current names are different.)

Skripal was recruited in 1995 by Pablo Miller, a British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, better known by the acronym "MI6") agent in Madrid. MI6 assigned Skripal his spy nickname: "Forthwith." After a successful espionage service under diplomatic cover in Madrid, Tallinn, and Warsaw, Miller retired and settled in the small town of Salisbury in the south of England, about 80 miles from London.

Skripal was at that time sitting in a Russian prison. In 2010, an exchange of spies took place in Vienna (Russia gave up four convicts for espionage, including Skripal, the United States ten.) Skripal accepted the offer of his former curator and settled near him in the same town of Salisbury.

What is missing in the Skripal poisoning case is the motive. If one looks at what happened superficially, there was basically no need for the intelligence services of Russia to kill Skripal. Yes, there is every reason to believe that after Putin came to power in 2000, Russia managed to eliminate objectionable former Russian citizens who moved to the U.K. at a speed of about one loud murder per year. However, all these killings have a clear motive: all the victims of the Kremlin were viewed as active opponents of Putin's regime.

However, Skripal was never an opponent of the Kremlin. On the contrary, he strongly supported the policies of President Putin, and, although he received a pension from the British government, he remains a citizen of Russia and does not hide his satisfaction with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea.

Skripal is a person of outstanding intelligence and analytical skills, fluent in several languages. However, he found himself having difficulty understanding the exact motives of the Kremlin. According to the doctors, after Skripal woke up (five weeks after the poisoning), he needed a "difficult psychological correction" to finally come to terms with the idea that his former colleagues from the GRU had attempted to assassinate him and his daughter.

Russia's participation in the poisoning looked irrational and illogical. Why did the Kremlin wait eight years after Skripal's pardon to deal with him? Skripal lived in Salisbury openly, under his own name, and there was no need to look for him. Why was it necessary to wait so long, and wait until his daughter suddenly came to him? Why break the centuries-old unwritten rules scrupulously followed by all the intelligence agencies of the world, which indicate that a spy exposed and pardoned by the head of the state is no longer dangerous? Why does Putin need all these problems just two weeks before the presidential elections in Russia? Why does Russia need all this headache just a few months before the World Cup?

The answer can be only one: the reason why the Kremlin had to deal with Skripal was much more serious than the World Cup and Putin's guaranteed re-election combined.

It had to be so serious that two GRU colonels — Alexander Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin — were sent to Salisbury (perhaps they also had accomplices). Mishkin is a military doctor who knew perfectly well that the A-234 substance given to him was a unitary (that is, ready-to-use) chemical weapon (as opposed to its binary version, better known as "Novichok").

At the time when Pablo Miller was recruiting spies for Great Britain, Christopher Steele was the head of MI6 in Moscow. After returning to London and retiring in 2009, Christopher Steele founded private intelligence corporation "Orbis Business Intelligence." Allegedly, Pablo Miller, a former recruiter, curator, and now one of Skripal's friends and neighbors, got a job at Orbis.

Therefore, when Christopher Steele received an order for fabrication of the "dossier" on Trump, the fate of an unsuspecting and innocent Skripal was sealed.

The story could have evolved quite differently if Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 presidential election. Then there would be no investigation of the "Russian case" by the Mueller team, the White House, or the U.S. Congress. However, Trump won the election, and it became clear to the Kremlin that sooner or later, the investigation by the new White House administration would reveal the true role played by the Russian intelligence services in the 2016 presidential election, including the stuffing of compromising materials on Trump through Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Christopher Steele, being the head of the Russian Desk at MI6, was the personal curator of Alexander Litvinenko, and in 2006, he took an active part in the investigation of Litvinenko's poisoning with radioactive polonium-210 in London. In his investigation, Steele utilized all of his extensive contacts, including those among the Russian spy agencies.

Ten years later, in 2016, a retired Steele maintained contact with some "friendly" Moscow intelligence officers. These "friends" played with him in the dark and used him as the disinformation channel to spread the GRU's dossier on Trump. Through a chain of intermediaries (Fusion GPS and Perkins Coie), the dossier had reached Hillary Clinton, who was the main paymaster.

Why did Steele, with all of his experience, miss this obvious disinformation campaign in 2016?

Christopher Steele is known to be an extremely left-wing mind, and he quite aggressively tried to help his transatlantic ideological soulmate, Hillary Clinton, to win the presidential election.

Unlike the Litvinenko and FIFA cases, the order for dirt on Trump was unquestionably political. Steele understood that the choice of his company from a variety of other similar firms was based precisely on his ideological preferences. Therefore, Steele included in the "Russian dossier" not only obvious disinformation (for example, the "visit of Trump's lawyer Cohen to Prague"), but also many other vivid, unlikely, and highly desirable moments for the paymaster (for example, Trump's scene with prostitutes in Moscow hotel).

Why did Steele, well acquainted with the methods of Russian intelligence, allow the GRU to fool him this time? Steele had a sincere desire to believe that everything the "reliable Russian sources" had thrown at him was right.

In an attempt to monetize the dirty work, Steele was selling the "Russian dossier" not only to Hillary Clinton, but also to...

City of Worms murder: German girl wore hijab for her killer

More than 500 people participated in the funeral march on the weekend with flowers and candles for the 21-year-old Cynthia R. She was murdered in Worms by her migrant boyfriend Ahmed T (22) last week.

German tabloid Bild reported that friends of the family expressed their shock over her death. They said the relationship between Ahmed and Cynthia appeared to be going smoothly. “She wore hijab for Ahmed,” a friend of Cynthia’s father told Bild. “And she learned to speak Arabic out of love for him.”

When the two began their relationship four months ago, Ahmed T already knew that he was going to be deported. His asylum seeker application had been denied long ago.

So he tried to convince his new girlfriend to go with him to Tunisia. But friends of the family say that Cynthia declined his invitation.

Some speculate that because she did not want to move to Tunisia with him, she was killed. Last Monday an arrest warrant was issued for her boyfriend signalling a final deportation order. Less than 48 hours later, the situation between the two had escalated.

He stabbed the young woman by ramming a kitchen knife through her neck, her lungs, her hands and her back more than ten times.

Cynthia, a diligent nurse had been living with her parents, She had her own area upstairs with living room and bedroom. During the escalating dispute Ahmed stabbed the young woman with a long kitchen knife in her bed – on World Women’s Day.

Ahmed had registered himself under three different identities and had therefore cashed in three times on state benefits. Since his entry into Germany in October 2017, he has committed a long list of transgressions including “bodily injury, drugs, menace and coercion”. He also served a prison sentence for theft last October.

“She meant so much to me and I miss her a lot,” says her cousin Patrick Schopp. “I will keep her in my memory as this fun-loving person who never had anything bad to say about anyone and who was very helpful to everyone.”

Her uncle said: “She lived for her profession. Also wanted to study to become a midwife. She was happy, liked to celebrate. ”

The funeral march was not entirely peacful either. During a memorial service at the Liebfrauenkirche, where an ecumenical prayer was said for the 21-year-old woman, there was an incident.

About twenty people came running out of the church where a service had been scheduled in a panic. They were members of the funeral march who were at the church early.

They came out distraught, calling for the police and crying, because apparently someone had stood in front of the altar with arms stretched out, yelling “Allahu Akhbar” loudly, as well as other things that people could not understand, causing panic and fear.

The police apprehended the man a hundred meters down the road. He was...

Maduro Militarizes Morgues To Hide Genocide Death Toll

In the wake of a massive blackout, the Venezuelan regime is using military personnel to prevent access to morgues and hospitals, in an effort to hide the weekend's death toll

So far, just at the University Hospital of Maracaibo, the Venezuelan blackout has left a toll of 296 dead, among them 80 babies, as the massive power outage now enters its fifth day.

The hunger precipitated by Venezuela’s socialist regime is eerily reminiscent of the situation in Ukraine in Stalinist times.

Without electricity, there is no internet or cell phones, so there is a lack of information on the total number of deaths. There is already talk of genocide, which follows patterns of previous dictatorships that sought to hold on to power at all costs.

IN THE WAKE OF A MASSIVE BLACKOUT, THE VENEZUELAN REGIME IS USING MILITARY PERSONNEL TO PREVENT ACCESS TO MORGUES AND HOSPITALS, IN AN EFFORT TO HIDE THIS WEEKEND’S DEATH TOLL

Since the government is the only supplier of electricity in the country, it bears the blame for this crisis, and its actions are entirely part of a political strategy.
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The morgues at the nation’s main hospitals are already under military custody, and Venezuelan families have no way to communicate with each other, and many with loved ones in hospitals are fearing the worst.

The official figures have reported 17 deaths linked to the lack of dialysis.

Key opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, expressed her outrage at the unfolding disaster: “And babies in incubators? And the patients in intensive therapy? And those who need dialysis today? And those who need to keep their chemotherapy treatments refrigerated?”

Among the most shocking images, is that of a mother with her little daughter in arms turned into skin and bones by malnutrition so severe that she died without being able to access medical care, since the hospitals do not have energy.

The appearance of the girl is typical of the victims of Holodomor, which in Ukrainian means “artificial hunger.” This is how the process that starved 7,000,000 Ukrainians on the orders of Stalin, leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, is known.

The famine in Ukraine, in fact, was not due to a lack of food. On the contrary, just as today Venezuela is the country with the world’s greatest oil reserves, Ukraine was the richest area in terms of grain. Under Stalin’s socialist regime, it had to supply the rest of the 15 republics that formed the Soviet Union.

Those who opposed the expropriation, were punished. They were sent to forced labor camps in Siberia, where 1.5 million people froze to death. Those who stayed were condemned to work the land without being able to eat the fruits of their own labor. If a Ukrainian ate what he harvested, he was shot on the spot.

Also during the government of Lenin, the first socialist government inspired by the ideas of Karl Marx, 5 million people died of hunger, when by order of the Bolshevik government, they were denied access to...

Peddlers of the Green New Deal know that the only way for their radical agenda to become reality is if Americans buy into the wildest claims of climate extremists.

It’s clear that some of the most enthusiastic supporters of this radical agenda are young people.

This was on full display in the now viral video of a meeting between Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and a group of children from the Sunrise Movement.

This is how @SenFeinstein reacted to children asking her to support the #GreenNewDeal resolution -- with smugness + disrespect.

This is a fight for our generation's survival. Her reaction is why young people desperately want new leadership in Congress. pic.twitter.com/0zAkaxruMI
— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) February 22, 2019

Perhaps children and young Americans are more likely to buy into the extreme environmentalist doomsaying due to the fact that they weren’t around for the laughably wrong predictions of the past that never came true.

Panics over looming environmental and climate apocalypse have been with us for a long time. Thomas Malthus famously predicted in his 1798 book “An Essay on the Principle of Population” that population growth would overtake food supply and mass starvation would result unless population controls were implemented.

Of course, his predictions were utterly wrong, since free enterprise greatly increased the food supply as the population increased.

The modern environmentalist movement has picked up a Malthusian ethos of its own and, when combined with the politics of climate change, has produced numerous egregiously wrong predictions about global trends.

Here are five of the biggest misses:

1. Population Bomb to Cause Global Famine by 2000

The first Earth Day, in 1970, was filled with hyperbole and exaggerations about mankind’s future. Much of the craziness was unearthed in a remarkable expose in 2000 by Reason contributor Ronald Bailey.

One of the most common ideas, in a throwback to Malthus, was that the global food supply simply couldn’t keep up with population growth.

Peter Gunter, a professor at North Texas State University—now named the University of North Texas—wrote about how mass starvation was in the world’s near-term future. Gunter spoke in language that should be all too familiar to those who have paid attention to the debate over climate change in modern times:

Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions. … By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.

Ah, yes, all the scientists agree that the world will end by the year 2000.

Of course, this didn’t come to pass. In fact, a remarkable reduction in poverty has occurred around the globe since 1970. A chart published by Human Progress demonstrated just how dramatically global hunger has decreased in the past few decades.

The total number of undernourished persons is dropping despite population growth. https://t.co/R3hV48GtsI #food pic.twitter.com/PHZhVJbVET
— HumanProgress.org (@HumanProgress) May 18, 2017

Thanks, capitalism.

2. Air Pollution Will Be So Bad That City Dwellers Will Have to Wear Gas Masks
Another grand prediction at Earth Day 1970 (it was full of doozies) was that the air pollution problem common to many American cities would continue to get exponentially worse without widespread government control of the American way of life.

One particularly extreme claim came from the January 1970 edition of Life magazine, as quoted by Bailey:

Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support … the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution [and] by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half.

Again, such remarkable accuracy from these all-knowing scientists.

This didn’t happen, in part due to federal, state, and local restrictions on emissions. But it had much more to do with the general societal response to the problem.

Wealthier, more prosperous societies simply have more means and more of an inclination to make trade-offs to enjoy cleaner air. Free societies such as the United States found ways to reduce pollutants as a means to improve quality of life.

It’s very different in countries like, say, China, where pollution in some cities is unbearable due to the developing nature of the country combined with the authoritarian nature of government, which is more preoccupied with growth in gross domestic product than the comfort and well-being of individual citizens.

The fact is, free societies began solving this problem long ago, and our cities have become much better, not worse.

3. Entire Nations Could Be Wiped Out by 1999

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., a self-avowed socialist, recently claimed that the world would end in 12 years if we don’t radically transform our economy to...