A SORDID TALE INDEED.

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Conveniently overlooked or just not mentioned by our media was the ‘Newsweek’ report from February this year on the Syrian Government not using the banned nerve agent Sarin against its own people. You would have thought it crucial that people should have been told this.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis said that the U.S. has “no evidence” that the Syrian government used the banned nerve agent Sarin against anybody in Syria. As the article says, Mattis offered no temporal qualifications, which means that both the 2017 event in Khan Sheikhoun and the 2013 tragedy in Ghouta are unsolved cases in the eyes of the Defense Department and Defense Intelligence Agency. In other words, there is not now, or has there ever been any kind of proof for the accusations made against President Assad and by implication, Putin’s Russia.

Taken together with the claim of Iraqi WMD of which there was no such thing, we would all need to very, very dubious of the recent events in Salisbury and Douma. No less an expert than ‘Major General Jonathan Shaw, a former head of Britain’s Special Forces has challenged Theresa May’s claim that President Assad was behind the chemical attack in Douma. In his statement he said, “Why would Assad use chemical weapons at this time? He’s won the war. That’s not just my opinion, it is shared by senior commanders in the US military. There is no rationale behind Assad’s involvement whatsoever. He’s convinced the rebels to leave occupied areas in buses. He’s gained their territory. So why would he be bothering gassing them?” Speaking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday, the ex-SAS and Parachute Regiment commander added, “The jihadists and the various opposition groups who’ve been fighting against Assad have much greater motivation to launch a chemical weapons attack and make it look like Assad was responsible. Their motivation being that they want to keep the Americans involved in the war following Trump saying the US was going to leave Syria for other people to sort out.”

In fact, he was invited to speak to SKY news but when he raised these issues, he was promptly cut off, as you see from this short clip.

But his views were echoed by Admiral Lord West, former head of the Royal Navy, who said, “If I was advising President Assad, why would I say use chemical weapons at this point? It doesn’t make any sense. But for the jihadist opposition groups I can see why they would.”

As you can read here, the Russians found forty tons of chemical weapons after clearing terrorist ISIS groups out of one area. They reported this to the US and suggested that these terrorists not only had such weapons but would likely stage an attack in Syria with them and then get the White Helmets to blame Assad. Syria, which was confirmed to have destroyed its sarin stockpiles under a deal brokered between Russia and the US in 2013, has denied the current American accusations. Russia also pointed out that thorough impartial investigation of the incident never took place, with OPCW experts refusing to visit Khan Shaykhun. It has argued that the attack could have been staged. For more on this, have a look at this short video.

What is of particular interest is the testimony of the two medics in the hospital where the injured were treated directly after the alleged attack.

So knowing Assad had no motive to launch a chemical attack even  if he could get such weapons and having no concrete proof to show the world that he did it and further, not waiting for an investigation of any kind to take place, the western powers launched an attack of this sovereign country. In doing so, they broke several international laws they claim to uphold and contravened the very UN Charter they helped draft. But the Russians and Syrians remained calm in the face of such scandalous behavior and instead asked that the OPCW be sent to examine the site of the alleged attack. After some prevaricating, this was finally agreed and the inspectors were due on the ground  in Damascus last Saturday, (14th April 2018). However, out of the blue that Friday, warplanes from the West struck and bombed the site the OPCW were supposed to examine. As a result, under UN mandate, peacekeepers from the UN had to visit the area to judge how safe it was before giving permission to the OPCW inspectors to examine it. The delay then was contrived by the western press as being Russia’s fault, which it patently was not. It was the fault of the West for bombing the site when they knew it was due to be examined.

When finally the UN force on the ground pronounced it safe and the Syrians and Russians announced that the examination would go ahead, Washington and London immediately issued statements accusing the Russians of tampering with the site. If that isn’t classic smoke and mirrors I don’t know what is. For the western press it means that if the OPCW were to find evidence of chemical weapons which could only have come from, let’s say, The Porton Down Laboratories, then our media can scream that the Russian planted them there as the Yanks predicted. If it turns out, (as I suspect), that no evidence is found of chemical weapons by the OPCW then it’s the same story, the Russians cleared it all away.

But if all of that is not perplexing enough, it appears that London handed over samples of the substance used in the alleged Salisbury attack to to the Organisation for the Prohibition of the Chemical Weapons (OPCW), who in turn sent them for analysis to the Spiez Laboratory in Switzerland. It turns out that the Skripals were poisoned with an incapacitating toxin known as 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate or BZ, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, citing the results of the examination. The Swiss center sent the results to the OPCW. However, the UN chemical watchdog limited itself only to confirming the formula of the substance used to poison the Skripals in its final report without mentioning anything about the other facts presented in the Swiss document. Incidentally, the Spiez Laboratory. This facility is a Swiss state research center controlled by the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Protection and, ultimately, by the country’s defense minister. The lab is also an internationally recognized center of excellence in the field of the nuclear, biological, and chemical protection and is one of the five centers permanently authorized by the OPCW. Interesting too that the toxin, BZ, was never produced in Russia, but was in service in the US, UK, and other NATO states. This story was covered in the West by Tyler Durden here.

So where does all that leave us? That the West has been continually denigrating both Moscow and Damascus is an absolute fact. They routinely demonise Assad and Putin in a most undiplomatic and ugly manner. They would blame them for the hard winter we have just had if they thought we’d believe them. And yet Moscow would know that there was not a single benefit to them in using Novichok on their own citizens in the UK at this time or any other. They could have shot, knifed or choked both if they wished and nobody would have been any the wiser. Similarly, Assad is on the point of overall victory in Syria and Trump has announced he intends to bring his army home. Even a village idiot under such circumstances would not commit a chemical attack on his own people and Assad is no idiot. He’s a British trained medical doctor, a popular political leader to his own people and a true reformer in the western sense. He protects both a thriving christian and jewish community in Syria while engaging muslim terrorists intent on destroying his country. The Russian presence in Syria is legal under international law but the presence of western forces there is utterly illegal. 

And finally, people all over the west people are beginning to claim that all of this is just more false flag operations carried out by the west in attempt to get backing from their own people for more wars. Very worryingly, “Theresa May has declared without hesitation that she would order a nuclear strike to kill hundreds of thousands of people if she thought it was necessary.” Wow! If she thinks it is necessary. Necessary for what? Her own flagging political career perhaps? A war time Prime Minister is guaranteed the people’s support, right? Compare that against Putin’s many statements and pleas to the West for peace in our world and respect for international laws. Instead the Democrats in America are intent on making you believe that Hilary lost the election because of the Russians. On that topic, it may be informative for you to watch this nugget,

called ‘Overthrow.’ In it, they chronicle 100 Years of U.S. Meddling & Regime Change, from Iran to Nicaragua to Hawaii to Cuba. By one count, the United States has interfered in more than 80 foreign elections between 1946 and 2000. And that doesn’t count U.S.-backed coups and invasions. Now try googling Russian Meddling & Regime Change and it won’t take you long to see the huge difference.

It’s all a lot to take in but worth it if you seek the truth rather than the lazy option of wanting to believe propaganda.

RISKY BUSINESS

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Some time ago the University of Pittsburgh research Departments did a project on risk and life expectancy. It threw up some interesting facts, (if they were right), and I’d like to share some of their findings with you.

They measured “Loss of Life Expectancy,” (LLE), in days due to various situations and conditions. For example, if you live near a nuclear plant, you could lose 0.04 of a day over your lifetime. That amounts to 156 seconds. Many people are scared of flying and apparently each of us risks one full day of our lives less whether we fly or not. It’s another day gone too due to hurricanes and tornadoes. Peanut butter though is more risky. You could lose a possible 1.1 days if you spread that shit on your bread.

But birth control pills are five times more dangerous than flying and firearms are over twice as risky as birth control pills at eleven days less life. Then there is the morning coffee. Bet you didn’t know that two cups a day will shorten your life by 26 full days. Naturally occurring radon under your home could knock 35 days off your life. Mind you, on this scale, a simple fall can shorten your life by 39 days. Wow! That’s a month and a bit!

If you buy a small car rather than a midsize one for all the good environmental reasons you might do that, you could lose two months off your life compared to the ‘gas-guzzling owner’ of the bigger car. Air pollution alone is knocking 80 days on average off all of our lives. Booze accounts for a risk of losing 230 days out of your life so if you’re having a pint, be sure to savor it.

What they euphemistically refer to as “Sub-optimal medical care,” or a shit health service and greedy doctors, can account for 550 days less on this earth than the good Lord had planned for you. An obvious risky contender is cancer and if you have that, you are into two and a half years less. Well, It would, wouldn’t it? Cancer is the BIG killer after all, right?

Well, actually, here is where the research gets interesting. You see, topping the list is the simple condition of living in poverty. The National Anti-Poverty Strategy (NAPS) offers the following definition of poverty: “People are living in poverty, if their income and resources (material, cultural and social) are so inadequate as to preclude them from having a standard of living, which is regarded as acceptable by Irish society generally.” They acknowledge that many who are in employment are also suffering from poverty, and that is in a country such as Ireland, considered to be among the wealthiest Nations on earth. But if you are one of the suggested one-third of the Irish population living in poverty, then you will die over nine and a half years sooner than those around who are not poor. That staggers me!

And it is worse for us blokes than for the ladies. If you are a male, you will die seven and a half years sooner than the skirts around you the same age. If you have heart disease, (a condition I inherited in the DNA), then you gone over five and a half years earlier than everyone else. Being single rather than married will result in almost the same outcome as will being born black. Happily, when it comes to the risk of life expectancy, I’m not black.

But I am a male, technically not married, (but with all the responsibilities of it), I do have diagnosed heart disease, I smoked, which I forgot to say knocks a further six years off your life, given my social status and income I currently live in poverty apparently, so let’s tot up my risk. So that’s nine and a half years for being poor, seven and a half years for being a male, five and a half years for the dodgy ticker, and six and a half years because I liked a smoke. That is almost thirty years less than I should get in an normal average life.

Now, the life expectancy of a male in Ireland currently stands at 81.5 years. So taking my life’s risk estimate, I died at 50, almost twelve years ago.

I knew something was wrong!

POISONOUS ATMOSPHERE

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Well, it seems Varadkar has done his bit for EU solidarity and shown himself to be a safe pair of hands in Dublin for the Brussels mafia. By expelling a Russian Diplomat today, Little Leo will also have done no harm to his possible elevation to an EU Commissionership in the future.

You have to love the way these things are spun to us. We were told that, “A high level group,” recommended this course of action but not one single journalist asked just who this so-called high level group were. Do you know? And when they say high level, do they mean in international espionage or politics or could it be a high level group from Fine Gael itself.

Regardless of who these ‘high level’ individuals were, the more important question is, what did they base their judgement on? No evidence of Russian guilt has been produced no matter how hard Teresa May tried. She put the OPCW under severe pressure to pronounce that the alleged Novichok was Russian and not anybody else’s. Despite the intense pressure on them and under duress, the OPCW statement would only say that Novichok was of a type developed in Russia, a very different matter. A Volkswagen car bought in the UK could be said to of a type developed by the Germans. Missiles currently raining down on civilians in Yemen are of a type developed in the UK, but fired by Saudis.

So the Irish Government had NO proof that the Russians had anything to do with the Salisbury incident. Indeed they have no proof that such an incident even took place. Nobody from this country has seen either of the injured parties. But what we do know is that Novichok is supposed to be deadly even with minimal exposure and yet only three were ‘injured’ allegedly by it. Of those, the attending Policeman is out of hospital and back home. The young lady is on the mend and older spy is stable. Reports put out that over forty others were being treated for exposure were denied by the lead doctor at the local hospital in Salisbury. In an open letter to the Guardian, he stated that only three people have been treated, no others. Does nobody in Leinster House find this strange? Has the question not been asked, why are the British lying about this?

In the meantime, an Irish diplomat is making their way back to Dublin following a tit for tat expulsion by the Kremlin.
The Irish government has criticized the Russian move as “unjustified”. What in hell do they mean by unjustified? It is akin to waking up to somebody and punching them in the mouth for no reason and when they punch back, claiming it is unjustified. The level of bullshit and deceit has racketed up to a whole new height. We may not have the warmest relations with Russia but we have no dispute with them. When this State was formed, the Soviet Union was the very first State to recognize us internationally. We profess to be a neutral country and yet we commit this blatantly partisan action of expelling a Russian Diplomat.

I don’t know about you but I do not support our expelling of the Russian from their Dublin Embassy. It is only two years since the Americans were discovered to have been spying both on the French and German leaders and members of their Governments and yet no Yanks were expelled from here or anywhere else. It is quite possible, (or even probable), that the Yanks are spying here as well and their CIA has shown a voracious appetite for murder al over the world. Perhaps some of the unsolved cases on the Garda books are down to them but naturally, we will never know. Professional assassins tend not to get caught, that’s why they are called professional. And on a final point, there are 198 countries on Earth and a mere 20+ have expelled Russian Diplomats over this concocted incident in Salisbury.

I’m with the majority on this!

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

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So, here is a conundrum. This one is a drink-driving court case where a young cyclist was killed by a motorist and it actually happened. I have the newspaper account of the case and not for the first time, it made me wonder. I’ll give you the facts and you can make up your own minds about it.

So we have a very old man in his seventies driving with 140 mgs of alcohol per 100 mls of blood at a time of the accident when the legal limit was 50 mgs. That is less than a single pint of beer. Up until recently that limit was 80mgs and that, in turn, was down from a legal 120 mgs not too long ago. Is the limit the problem? In Germany for example, two pints of regular-strength lager or two small glasses of wine would put you over the limit. But this isn’t a catch-all rule. Factors like your weight, sex, metabolism and how much you’ve eaten all contribute to how your body processes alcohol, so everyone has different limits. The point being that even with 140mgs in your blood, you might be perfectly safe to drive. The term drunk then is different for people. The old man involved in this accident had the dependence of his housebound wife on him and so his use of a car for shopping etc, was essential. But when arrested on a country road, he was ‘legally’ over the limit and a young cyclist was dead.

It’s an open and shut case on the surface of it and the Judge imposed a one-year suspended jail term for the careless driving causing death, a €500 fine for the drink driving, and a disqualification from driving for five years. This old fellow is off the road and his dependent wife is now in big trouble too. For the victims of this, the judge noted from the deceased’s father’s victim impact statement that no sentence on the defendant would ameliorate the suffering of his family, and I think we can all sympathize with that. From the descriptions of the cyclist, he sounded like a typical likeable Irish lad, bubbly and full of fun and with a future ahead of him. That is why such an accident is so tragic.

Now I am depending on a newspaper account of the court case for the facts and there are many questions I would have for clarification but I am not at liberty to ask. However, there are a few oddities here that in a different climate might have led to a different judgement. Firstly, it happened on a dark, wet, miserable night in March so immediately we have reduced and/or impaired visibility. The bike had no lighting and the rider didn’t wear a bright visibility jacket either. He was wearing dark clothing, the court was told. Other drivers saw and reported the lad on the bike but managed to avoid colliding with him. Giving the background to the incident, a Detective Garda said one motorist who passed the cyclist shortly before the accident saw that he was about a metre out from the hard shoulder and he turned his car to go back to offer him a lift home. The man was obviously concerned at the danger involved and wanted to prevent something more serious taking place. However, the fatal accident had occurred before this motorist made it back.

So the cyclist appears to have been riding far out into the road on a dark and rainy night with no lights on the bike and wearing dark clothes and while other motorists managed to spot him and avoid hitting him, an older driver didn’t. One motorist was so alarmed by the dangerous behavior of the cyclist that he turned around to come back and offer him a lift to wherever he was going but was just too late. It would appear then that only luck or excellent driving prevented several motorists from hitting the lad on the bike and finally an older driver whom you might expect no longer had 20/20 vision was not so lucky.

I could ask what an old fellow like this was doing out on such a night? I could ask also what an eighteen year old boy was doing out on his bike without proper lighting and dress in such conditions. I could ask how erratic the cyclist’s behavior was and I’d like to know also whether the old guy in the car was spotted driving dangerously prior to the incident. There was much more to this case than met the eye and in the light of that, a judgement of, “The fundamental, basic duty on all car drivers is to keep a proper lookout,” is pretty hollow and self-serving. It is all very pompous sounding but doesn’t factor in so many elements of this sad accident. Even when keeping a 100% lookout behind the wheel, shit happens and we all know that.

The biggest question that can’t be answered is, if the old guy hadn’t taken a drink in weeks, would the accident still have happened under the adverse circumstances of that night? Was a couple of pints the only determining factor or were both parties just terribly unfortunate? If the young lad wasn’t out there in the rain on his bike, the old lad would have driven home none the wiser. Conversely, if the old lad had done his driving in daylight, the young lad might still be alive. This poor old guy does not come across as a reckless piss-head racing home and not giving a shit about anybody. But he has a criminal record now, his pension will have to pay out €500 in fines and he’s off the road until he’s seventy-five, at which point you’d have to believe he won’t get insurance for love nor money. The young lad is dead and there’s no coming back from that but many lives have been blighted.

So in all of it, I wonder if justice has truly been done?