Events during the spring of 2018, and we are speaking about the accusations against Russia and Syria involving the use of chemical warfare weapons, has opened a new page in history. Russia’s Foreign Minister, Lavrov, complains that former levels of lying and propagandizing, always within some agreed upon limits, have now been not only exceeded but reached a level where no known adjective can apply.
When reports from a Swiss based independent laboratory confirmed that the poisoning agent used in the Skripal scandal was not of Russian origin but rather “BZ,” it became necessary to establish some background. We will include open source intelligence from available news media, too often ignored or hidden despite the fact is sits glaringly in front of the public eye, and move to the more esoteric, information available only to military and intelligence professionals. We start with Russia Today, April 14, 2018:
“The substance used on Sergei Skripal was an agent called BZ, according to Swiss state Spiez lab, the Russian foreign minister said. The toxin was never produced in Russia, but was in service in the US, UK, and other NATO states.
Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, and his daughter Yulia 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 conducted by a Swiss chemical lab that worked with the samples that London handed over to the Organisation for the Prohibition of the Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
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, the Russian foreign minister added. He went on to say that Moscow would ask the OPCW about its decision to not include any other information provided by the Swiss in its report.
Lavrov said that the Swiss center that assessed the samples is actually 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.”
We enter not the world of Kafka or Orwell but of Lewis Carroll “Behind the Looking Glass,” where baseless allegations are fact and facts are trumped with “Red Queen” mannerisms by “alternative facts” and empty denials. Too many on all sides stayed silent when “new think” replaced rationality.
America’s president Donald Trump, now seemingly the “blood enemy” of Russia has taken New Think to a new level, his personal ties to organized crime, his continual lying, his tax evasion and now “wag the dog” military attacks to “save his own very very fat behind,” pushing the world to the brink of Armageddon.
The April 2018 missile attack on Syria, allegedly to stop Syria from using or developing poison gas is problematic from many directions. Legal arguments no longer seem to matter. Because of this, we will choose another approach, in simpler terms, related to the adage of a “pot calling a kettle black.”
The US has never stopped developing, storing and using biological or chemical weapons. More recently, Vietnam was a common testing ground for gasses including sarin. In fact, sarin gas was issue for use to special operations personnel and used in hundreds of operations though only a few are admitted.
During Vietnam, American special operations units became increasingly dependent on the use of poison gas to the point that it became a threat in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union. American POW’s such as now Senator John McCain made propaganda broadcasts while a prisoner in North Vietnam accusing the US of using poison gas and testing a number of biological agents as well.
American prisoners held in North Korea more than a decade before made similar statements, statements such as those later made by McCain were put down to “Stockholm Syndrome,” the desire by captors to recognize with and seek approval from captors who control their very lives. Though this is mostly likely true in some cases, it isn’t true in all.
The US did use both biological and chemical weapons in Korea and Vietnam, chemicals developed in a program founded by CIA/LSD investigator Frank Olson along with George Merck. From Veterans Today, an article that went viral and led to the removal of over 2 million Facebook references in retaliation:
Today another chemical weapons stockpile was found in East Ghouta, produced in Germany, fully weaponized and commercially produced by Merck.
Merck was the primary producer of chemical weapons for Germany in World War I and George Merck founded the War Research Service along with Frank Olson in 1944, which using captured Germany and Japanese scientists and research facilities, took control of America’s biological and chemical warfare production which continues to this day in facilities at Fort Meade, Maryland and at the Lugar Lab in Tbilisi, Georgia in partnership with the current government of Ukraine.
Last week, Russia and Syria announced the capture of British chemical weapon stockpiles in East Ghouta along with the capture of a “coalition” command and chemical weapons facility with all personnel. Taken from the combined statement censored from the western press, from March 25, 2018
‘The Syrian Arab Army and with the help of Russian captured a shipment of chemical weapons destined for the Eastern Ghouta. These were British weapons produced at Porton Down in Salisbury.
Russian suspects that the Skripal incident is related as by their records, Skripal was working at Porton Down as a chemical weapons trafficker in partnership with a Ukrainian firm. Russia denies attacking Skripal but admits he was under surveillance for his activities involving support of terrorism in Syria and arms trafficking.
Russia also confirms that there are British, American, Israeli and Saudi intelligence officers who were caught by the Syrian army in one of the heavily fortified operations rooms during the invasion of the Syrian army and its allies of the East Ghouta.’
VT asked the Syrian government for serial numbers and closeup photographs of chemical weapons used. Syria sent them and they were published, photos which including shipping documents, serial numbers, lot numbers, all of which led to manufacturing facilities in the UK and Germany, proving beyond any doubt that American backed terrorists, they can’t be called “rebels,” aided by the CIA/MI6 funded “White Helmets,” staged not only the recent gas attacks in Ghouta but “quite probably” or “quite likely” or even “most likely,” using terms the US throws around so often, every gas attack and perhaps other attacks as well.
Any group that would stage a gas attack would stage a school shooting or a car bombing, any group that would act inside Syria could and would do the same in France or Italy or Britain or, perhaps “especially,” inside the United States.
Welcome to the world of “New Think.”
It’s important to look at the Skripal case in a new context, or perhaps a “New Think” context. Is it possible that “Skripal” was a fabricated incident to “pre-state” or “condition” the public for baseless charges against Syria and Russia?
If “Skripal” was BZ gas, then the use of chlorine gas in East Ghouta, evidence by photographs proving its origins at Merck facilities in Germany, establishes a pattern.
Let’s take the American statements on the Syrian attack as well and look for fatal errors that expose “New think.” Supposedly the “allied” nations attacked Syria’s secret scientific research facilities that were working to develop chlorine gas. Wikipedia is useful in establishing when and where chlorine gas was developed. Were Trump to be believed, it comes from Syria at some time during the last year or so. Here is what Wikipedia says:
“The most common compound of chlorine, sodium chloride (common salt), has been known since ancient times. Around 1630, chlorine gas was first synthesised in a chemical reaction, but not recognised as a fundamentally important substance. Carl Wilhelm Scheele wrote a description of chlorine gas in 1774, supposing it to be an oxide of a new element. In 1809, chemists suggested that the gas might be a pure element, and this was confirmed by Sir Humphry Davy in 1810, who named it from Ancient Greek: χλωρός, translit. khlôros, lit. ‘pale green’ based on its colour.”
Who would have believed that Trump could be wrong by nearly 400 years and that chlorine gas as produced by Merck in Germany and smuggled to terrorists in East Ghouta is only a concentrated form of something common to science more than a century and a half before the founding of the United States?
What kind of research could Syria have been doing on chlorine gas? Thus, when the Pentagon or Trump brag about hitting chlorine gas research facilities, perhaps they were thinking they were living in another era, perhaps 17th century Britain?
More than this, we must return to the issue of BZ gas. When the Skripals fell ill, key British politicians such as Boris Johnson and Theresa May immediately blamed Russia and then named a specific “Russia only” nerve gas called Nova-chuck or something similar. This gas, these politicians claimed, was “a hundred times more powerful than sarin” and caused instantaneous death for anyone exposed.
The problem here is simple. The Skripals are out of hospital and, in fact, there is no real evidence they were ever sick at all, we must take the word of politicians such as Johnson and May who at best are adherents themselves to “New Think.” For both, up is commonly down and the difference is of little concern to either as both seem to share an abundance of what the CIA commonly calls “moral flexibility.” “Moral flexibility” is a nice way of saying “criminal psychopath” without having to seem unpleasant.
It the Swiss are right, and they make great watches, so they must be, as we all used to hide our money there, then BZ gas was what was used, if in fact something was used at all, which has never been answered as well. See where this is going? From “War is Boring,” a popular military blog:
“During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies could expect all sort of dangers if they ever got into a war with the United States—including nuclear weapons.
The Pentagon was even prepared to deploy BZ gas. Sometimes read “buzz,” these letters were the codename for a chemical agent that would incapacitate rather than kill enemy troops.
While nonfatal, BZ causes a wide array of potentially incapacitating symptoms in its victims. Headache, dry skin, drowsiness and constipation sound relatively mundane—like the side effects you hear in prescription drug advertisements.
Other effects are decidedly more sinister. Dosed soldiers could become disoriented, oblivious to or disinterested in their surroundings or even experience hallucinations, according to a U.S. Army manual from 1963 that we obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
“The incapacitating agent BZ munitions give the commander a capability to apply a nonlethal force in selected situations,” the previously confidential document explains.
‘Proper use will facilitate gaining control of a selected area with a minimum of destruction and death in the target population.’”
Military insiders know the real history of gasses like ultra-deadly VX and the hallucinogens like BZ were continually used during the Cold War. BZ was first tested by the CIA in conjunction with Israeli and South African forces in Angola in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Developed, according to sources, by South African cardiologist Woulter Basson, and later weaponized at Fort Meade, Maryland and used in both bombs and artillery shells in Serbia/Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Panama and in the invasion of Grenada.
America used both BZ and VX gas extensively in the run up to Desert Storm, gassing thousands of Iraqi soldiers. Earlier, the US supplied Iraq with both VX and BZ gas to use on Iran and an odd “what goes around, comes around” coincidence.
In fact, all US military special operations units have both agents available for use in any operation to disable or kill. This takes us down to “Nova-chuck,” real or imaginary and why the Skripals, who, if hit by nerve agents would have been dead long ago, are unharmed and healthy, an impossibility were it not for “New Think.”
Again, if the Swiss are correct and BZ gas was used, the Skripals would not have required hospitalization at all. They would have been totally well in a few hours if not minutes. Were they kept in hospital under listed as “grave nearing death” as part of a drama which ended in the attacks on Syria and “New Think” propaganda staging?
Then again, as the US teaches at its intelligence schools, no operation is begun without creating “cover and deception” in order to shift blame. By these standards, the East Ghouta gas attacks and the Swiss proven attack on Skripals have some common elements.
The MI6 funded White Helmets clearly staged the East Ghouta attack as shown in articles including this one from the BBC:
“Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said a reported chemical attack in Syria was staged by foreign agents.
A spokesman for Russia’s defence ministry accused the UK of being involved in staging the attack.”
What the BBC left out was the video, the photos, the physical evidence or even the mention that such exists and was offered yet no Western media chose to report the truth, not about Syria nor about Skripal and why two dead people are now playing tennis every day or why they spent weeks in the hospital while the world came apart when their actual “illness,” if indeed they were ill, would have rectified itself in minutes. Welcome to “New Think.”
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
