Showing posts with label Syria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Syria. Show all posts

Tuesday 20 March 2018

Intellectual Integrity and Dealing with Russia

The hysteria surrounding events in Salisbury - the attempted murder of two Russians and the collateral near manslaughter of a policeman, using a deadly nerve agent - reached epidemic proportions last weekend. What we knew for certain was that three people were close to death at one time (two still critical at the time of writing), that one of them was connected to the murky world of post-Cold War intelligence and that a tool not available to the ordinary murderer - not the mere deadly cyanide of an Agatha Christie novel - had been used.

There is no reason to cast aspersions on character of the main victim. As we will see, we simply do not know very much at all. In fact, as of today, he is not dead (and we hope he recovers) but critically ill alongside his daughter and this alone makes the Prime Minister's immediate shooting from the hip to point the finger at the Kremlin a little odd. Critically ill not only does not mean dead but it means the possibility of sufficient recovery to be able to give evidence against perpetrators - so why not wait a little longer?

It was, of course, reasonable to believe that it was highly likely (though not certain) that Russians were involved as perpetrators as much as victims but it was perhaps an enormous step too far to say with such certainty - as the Prime Minister and her Government did - that it was 'highly likely' that the Russian Government, the Kremlin no less, ordered the 'hit'. It was even more challenging for our Foreign Secretary to claim that President Putin was 'overwhelmingly likely' to have done so personally. What was the evidence for this? In the end, the Government was asking us to trust it and that too is very challenging as Jeremy Corbyn implied.

Early polling followed the usual trajectory in these cases (much like Iraq). Things started with a surge of support for the Government on limited information and instinctive trust for authority. Then the doubts started to set in. Lack of data raised awareness of the implications, the partisan agenda and the lack of a solid intellectual basis for the extravagance of the claims. People started to remember other cases where they were led down the garden path. This questioning started at the margins and then developed quickly amongst the more intelligent members of the establishment, those who place intellectual integrity ahead of tribal solidarity and who care about the evidential basis for allegations. 

The circle of questioning may expand but the mass tends to accept authority until it becomes clear that a policy is costly, ill-thought out and counter-productive. Eventually people in general may lose interest but the circle of criticism expands until some f**k-up or new data flips the population over to the other side of the game. Why go through this cycle of belief and distrust when a little delay might bring more certainty. This is what I am interested in here.

In this case, around a third of the population soon became thoroughly cynical about the Government's claims or were prepared to back Corbyn and his doubts - or simply had sufficient knowledge or intellectual integrity to ask their own questions. All that is sufficient to block any seriously radical act being contemplated by the Government - which helps to explain the rather weak response to such a 'highly likely' event: a few diplomats get thrown out which is matched by an exact number of ours thrown out by the Russians ... and then nothing! Perhaps as the evidence comes in we will see more considered actions but the whole thing looks like a hissy-fit instead of mature policy-making.

Does 'Highly Likely' Really Mean "We Don't Know?"

The 'highly likely' claim of Prime Minister seems to have been based on little more than that the nerve agent allegedly originated in Russia and not yet on direct evidence that the Russian Government was behind the crime. Again, why not wait a little for the recovery of the victims. The assumption is that a) the nerve agent could not be reproduced elsewhere and b) that the Russian Government is in total control of any stockpile. Sloppy thinking here. It was, of course, reported reasonably enough that "British officials had identified the substance as being part of the Novichok group of nerve agents which were developed by the Soviet military during the 1970s and 1980s"

But think about this for a moment. This is very old stockpile and 'part of'' suggests 'reproducibility' rather than a decisive identification with one single known agent that can be traced to a single known source. The criminals (for that is what they are, whether State-directed or not) have not used state of the art material. The assassination was clearly incompetent and not entirely professional. There are other agents for assassination tools to hand than left-over Soviet era nerve agent. 

If it is old Soviet stock pile, we know that a lot of such material fell into some dubious hands in the early 1990s before some rough sort of order was restored, that stock piles might have been in territory now inhabited by other States and that the early 1990s saw a Russia where everything had a price and where such material might be regarded as somebody's pension. Russian sources themselves say reasonably enough that if they want to kill someone, they have means more effective than this. Not a nice thought but plausible enough.

May would have done much better to say to the Russians that the evidence suggests that the Russian Government needs to explain how an old stockpiled Soviet nerve agent has been let loose on the world and then request British police access to Russian resources to uncover and bring to justice the perpetrators. As we say, it might have done better as well to give some time for the two main victims to recover or have a full murder investigation on their hands. But, no, it had to be confrontational and unsubtle in a relationship with a sensitive nuclear power where a final quarrel might result in the immolation of millions on both sides. .

It is certainly possible that a villainous Putin knew of and countenanced such an act even though it looks distinctly amateurish in conception. Yet this investigation had scarcely got under way before the accusations were made. Although the evidence was not available to make any claim stick in public (except on the basis of 'trust me'), by asserting Russian complicity with ultimatums and finger-pointing all possible attempts at dialogue to hear what the Russians had to say and gather further evidence was lost. Surely a more mature approach would have been to request Russian co-operation in the investigation and make your accusations when all avenues had been exhausted.

Needless to say, "Russia’s foreign ministry hit back immediately, saying May’s comments were a“circus show” and part of a political information campaign against Russia." Well, they were, regrettably probably right. The US had to posture in turn so that we then had three sets of idiots posturing at the expense of global peace. NATO had to jump in, of course, in any case nobody noticed it. The Europeans reluctantly complied with the demands of Western solidarity in a rather good statement that ambiguously took 'extremely seriously' the UK Government's intelligence assessment. I think we take it 'extremely seriously' too. 

Perhaps we are truly ruled by cynics, as are the Americans, Europeans and Russians. The Russians could just as easily have said that they were horrified by the incident, were disturbed at the presence of the nerve agent and would offer joint facilities to establish who was responsible and bring them to justice. They are no more to be trusted than the West but this does not mean they are guilty - yet!

What Is Going On?

This is really about nation states saying to their own peoples - 'trust me, I am your ruler" - and, of course, in all these countries there will be people, naive people, who take things on trust and assertion just as there will be conspiracy loons who decide that it was all down to the Jews. 

On Monday, May said the latest poisoning [actually the poisoning of Litvinenko is not proven as a state-sanctioned act either although the Russian Government appears to have done little to permit proper investigation and is also somewhere on the 'possible through highly likely' continuum] took place“against a backdrop of a well-established pattern of Russian state aggression”.

The attempted murder of a rogue agent in an English country town is suddenly to be linked not even to some mindless bit of institutional revenge against a man of limited or no importance but to some grand strategy of Russian expansion (never mind that it is NATO and the EU that have expanded continuously against the Russia since the fall of the Soviet Empire). 

These nasty little attempted murders by persons unknown soon became expanded into a grand narrative involving Syria and chemical weapons, Crimea and alleged human rights violations in Russia itself and very quickly too! This seemed to be about strengthening NATO and screwing over the idea of a European Army as much as it was about saving the good burghers of Salisbury from mass death by poisoning.

What was worth listening to carefully was the carefully constructed narrative of the expert being wheeled on to the BBC who has a double-barrelled name and a military style in leisure wear. It was flawed intellectually from beginning to end, based on not asking questions but telling a story and it ended with ... chemical weapons in Syria and Russia as a potential existential threat. 

Chemical Weapons

The fair point of the Government was that this was the first use of a nerve agent on the soil of Western democracy since the 1970s and that in itself is deadly serious, especially in the context of the threat of terrorism and the probable return of Islamist warriors from a country, Syria, where chemical weapons are part of the stockpiles of many villains.  

Yet this was not stated so clearly at first - all eyes were directed at Russia which is actually aiding the anti-Islamist forces and one cannot but believe that the storm was as much directed at warning the Russian-backed Syrian Government not to use all possible means to end its vicious civil war as it was to draw attention to the weaponry itself. 

Perhaps Russia is being warned that a terrorist act using chemical weapons in the UK will somehow be linked with them in the public mind so they had better police things at their end - who knows what goes on in the mind of Government strategists? 

Perhaps this is reasonable but, if so, it would tell us something about just how out-of-control our Government may be in handling the dire consequences of its own dabblings in the region under Prime Minister Blair. A debate on this would not be welcome. 

Perhaps horror at chemical weapons use becomes the 'casus belli' for getting Parliamentary approval for deeper British operations in Syria to please President Trump's Pentagon where enough Blairites are likely to back the Government against thinking High Tories to deliver yet another damnable intervention that leads nowhere but back to our small towns and cities.

But let us not go down the rabbit hole of political conspiracy theory ...

Behind The Grand Narrative
 
Behind any 'grand narrative', more short term prosaic concerns can be discerned. The amount of political and police resource thrown at the 'solving' of these attempted murders looked ridiculous when compared to the inaction of media, political class and police in dealing with the equally and most possibly more heinous crimes of Asian grooming gangs in towns like Telford. 

Yes, this needed to be investigated and with full resources because of the chemical weapons aspect but troops on the streets and irate speeches by leading politicians were not to be found in the case of the Asian grooming gangs and urban organised crime which are probably far more of a threat to most ordinary Britons even than 'terrorism'. But it is terrorist acts that result in the fall of Governments, not the sustained rape of vulnerable young women.

This was the attempted murder of one of their own under state protection - although this level of concern clearly did not apply to the poor girls allegedly under state protection in the care homes of the North! The State chooses what to care about and its priorities remains the same as it did in the days of Edward III -  the expansion of the Realm and the retention of power rather than the people within that Realm and their day-to-day welfare. It was why we chose to invest in nuclear weapons rather than national resilience in the 1950s and nothing has changed.

Regardless of 'who actually did it' (I say again that it remains possible that this was an act ordered by the Kremlin so don't accuse me of not recognising that possibility) , the exploitation of the incident to build a cohesive NATO narrative, among a population quietly questioning why we bother with such things as Trident in an age of austerity, is the most striking aspect of this 'spin'. 

This was a play, We were the audience, The actors were in place. All that was needed was the willing suspension of disbelief.  But something was very wrong with this story. As someone in the 'narrative game' I could see the joins and the leaps and tropes because that is my trade even if most people could not.  The sheer desperation of it all suggested a very frightened and insecure elite - frightened of things other than a nerve agent in Salisbury.

Of course, we all knew what was going on - it was political. It was a chance for the Prime Minister to play a card, well used as a technique since the Zinoviev Letter, to bind her own Party together against common enemies, distract the population from a Brexit which was reaching its rather embarrassing point of final sell-out negotiations and dish the Leader of the Opposition by associating him with a dimly recalled 'Red Menace' simply because he asked some pertinent questions about the basis for the Prime Minister's claims. 

The Deeper Level

Yet, at a deeper level, another agenda was in play. There is a brutal struggle going on for control of the security of Europe - that is, which system will stand against invaders from the East or the South? Will it be the Anglo-Saxon broad-based NATO or a Franco-German European Army that might threaten the UK one day more than it may threaten Moscow? Security is the Prime Minister's personal obsession. Defence of the Realm is certainly far more important than the Welfare of the People to a Tory tied to the interest of the Crown.

The targeting of Russia as villain was a golden opportunity to bind the tabloids and Parliament, which both purport to represent the people, around a forward defence of NATO's existential justification for itself - the demonic Russian East.

So, what we had here was a whole concatenation of interests and fears - the Russian bear, loss of power, terrorism in a Syrian context, the US alliance, Brexit and so much more - creating a general need to let rip and fix all attention on this one event in one place at one time and direct attention away from the Government and (bluntly) its lack of intelligence on the threat and towards an enemy and a threat, Russia, that could be easily understood by the editors and country Tories.

But what was the truth of the matter? What is actually likely, as opposed to what is politically convenient to be regarded as 'highly likely' regardless of the evidence actually presented to the people, was not under discussion. 

For, be in no doubt, this was a crime on British soil and a crime, moreover, that appears to have offered some threat to other ordinary citizens and which seems more than coincidental with a number of other killings of prominent Russians whose connections were somewhat rum to say the least (or at least compared to the average British subject to the Crown). The matter certainly deserved serious investigation alongside such crimes as those in Telford and Rotherham regardless even of the nerve agent aspects of the case. The police seem to be making little progress in cases to date and need a breakthrough.

But an analysis that pointed to the chaotic state of post-Soviet Russian politics was far less convenient than one that directed the public to the contribution of the West to that chaotic state or which might point to other actors than the Kremlin itself being responsible for crimes because of that state of chaos. A simple story was required. May referred dismissively to Russia being a mafia state rather than as a state in formation out of anarchic conditions created by the West with some deliberation a quarter of a century ago (I was there and I saw it).

The Chaotics of Russia

The bottom line here is that, while jumping to conclusions derived from ignorance, most of the media simply do not understand the chaotics of Russian governance. There is a history to this and journalists are not good at history. 

History is a serious problem for journalists. It requires them to drop simple narratives (their beloved half-truths they call 'stories') and deal with the real world of complex relationships between real facts while analysing the gaps in the record from experience. Journalism is not truth, it is literature. The news is written by people who have never done a deal, run a campaign or made a difficult executive decision. The political class' skill lies in manipulating data to provide the narratives (or 'stories) to these inexperienced people that can serve their purposes.

Yes, it is possible that Putin personally ordered an assassination but very unlikely. The fate of a minor traitor really is not top of mind for him in the middle of an election campaign. running a country of vast extent with a population nearly three times that of the UK which is still coping with the economic fall-out of the collapse of its empire and dealing with far more important issues such as the dispute with Ukraine, the war in Syria, Islamic terrorism, relations with President Trump, national defence and an economy which is far from out of the query basket. 

Our friend Valery Morozov was almost certainly correct on Channel 4 News (and this was accepted by the spokesperson for the chemical weapons establishment in that same segment) that Putin really has no interest in a minor intelligence figure from the past.

Yes, it is certainly possible that an arm of the Russian security apparat is engaged in a political war of its own involving violence. In such a case Putin can be blamed for not being in control of his own system and May may be right to condemn this - when she knows that this is so and on those terms rather than Boris' assertion of personal culpability.

This is more likely and would be justifiable cause for complaint but then the complaint should be cast in just those terms. We should be able to show Russian state complicity and Kremlin failure to control its own security operations and demand with evidence that Putin explain himself (although, I suppose, we might have to explain extraordinary rendition and drone murders on our side but let that pass). This might be more effective in embarrassing Russia's Great Leader than blind assertions for the camera.

What Is More Likely?

But it is still more likely that this is a factional struggle between oligarchical elements linked to the security apparat historically and over which the Government has no formal control in which our main victim got caught up. If so, we should perhaps be co-operating with the higher levels of the Russian State to bring these elements to book and end their links and access to the security state instead of throwing out accusations and trying to destabilise the country by backing people like Navalny. 

As Putin himself drew attention, in the cut sections of a recent NBC American TV interview (the fact of the cuts is more interesting here than what Putin said because he has said this before), while the West whines about alleged Russian villainy in trying to manipulate public opinion this was a game long ago started in the West - against not only in Russia but against half the world. 

To have intellectual integrity in making claims against someone, one should not be engaged in the similar acts oneself. There is no evidence, of course, that the West is bumping off people in Russia but it had been kidnapping or bumping off people it disapproves of elsewhere without due process for quite some time. It is in alliance with countries that have a very weak sense of due process and which execute people for dissident thoughts so that export order books may be filled.

Her Majesty's Government has not yet provided the smoking gun that shows the Russian Government to have been guilty of these murders directly or through negligence. It is acquiring 'opinions' from allies. For that reason, we should remain cautious until that evidence is produced and is more than, say, the surmise of a Coroners' Court based on evidence provided by state-directed intelligence agencies behind closed doors or an analysis of intelligence agents who may know the square root of f**k-all about the actual workings of the higher levels of the Russian state security system. 

The Childishness of the Response

Forget Iraq, think back to the complete ignorance of Soviet reality right up to the Fall of the Soviet Union now evidenced by post-Soviet academic researchers and the startling ignorance of Arab Islamism and its funding that caused so much embarrassment to American intelligence agencies in the wake of 9/11. There is no reason to think that anything has really changed since then. In general, we know very little about the minds of our enemies.'Highly likely' really should have been downgraded to 'possible' and taken seriously as 'possible'.

We are, in the UK, behaving a little like Austria-Hungary in July 1914 treating Russia like Serbia - making ultimatums that no sovereign Government can reasonably accept (though this may not be so clear to a Government that finds it so ridiculously difficult to recovery its own sovereignty from its nearer Empire, the European Union).

Despite the tabloids, the Tories won't be able to carry the whole country with it for long if the squabble ever turned into something more than a tit-for-tat diplomat expulsion. War is not on the agenda if economic sanctions are relatively trivial. A surge of support for Prime Minister has already begun to drift away as people start to question the basis for the claims and share qualms about throwing around mud on a surmise. 

The Russian State are frankly thumbing their noses at the UK with good reason. They are a proud sovereign people faced with no more than allegations and political warfare, not with investigative querying and requests for collaboration to find out the truth. Prime Minister May has shot herself in the foot for mere short term propaganda advantage.

Childishly, the Russian Foreign Minister has now been banned from the UK - as if he f**king cared. And that is an insult without anything more than a 'highly likely' behind it. The UK refuses to pass over the evidence for study against international treaty. Why? What is it afraid of? Should it not have asked the Russian Foreign Minister to come to London to discuss and resolve the situation.

Other Possibilities

This all looks like dodgy politics rather than a sincere investigation. The British police, left to their own devices, are generally rather good at this sort of thing (Telford, Hillsborough and Orgreave notwithstanding ... oops, have I sown a doubt? I apologise). But let us move on from the Russian Government and look at other possibilities without descending into conspiracy theory. 

It is possible that the Russian security apparat's only role is that a rogue element has sold a nerve agent under the counter to organised crime or to oligarchs (some of whom are often no better than organised crime evenwhen they are favoured sons of Western security) in which case, again, we should be co-operating with Russia to find the villains and not cutting off investigatory collaboration. 

It is, of course, possible that the nerve agent has been constructed in a Western or ex-Soviet Republican lab and then used for black ops purposes for whatever motive but possibly one related to destroying any possible Anglo-Russian or US-Russian rapprochement. 

This cannot just be ruled out of court as conspiracy theory, given the sociopathic nature of the darker side of the security company - after all, security operations attract types like Angleton and Beria as jam attracts wasps. 

This dark side agenda would fit with other narratives related to Syria and Iraq. We have discussed this already, Chemical weapons in Syria somewhat unaccountably popped up early in public intelligence briefings that appeared on camera within hours of the incident. It is always instructive to note carefully what is said in the first 24 hours by 'justification agents' in any political warfare operation because this is the raw preferred narrative before the political experts get to adjust the message away from the intelligence bods. 
  
The Least Likely Possibilities

It is certainly unlikely but the rogue element could come from our own security apparat or, more precisely, that we have a rogue ideologue or criminal coming out of Porton Down which just happens to be around the corner from Salisbury. Elements in our own security apparat have shown rogue status in the past but let's give them the benefit of the doubt.

Rogue agents on any side with dark revenge, personal or ideological or political motivations are another possibility. This should be considered by any policeman worth his salt but how inconvenient might this be if proved to be true and how likely might it be that it would be covered up? I leave you to your own level of trust of our politicians, our own security apparat and our own police forces. The track record is not great.

As we go through the likelihoods, we can say with reasonable confidence that it is highly unlikely that the British Government did this itself (even our most sociopathic politicians are not quite that stupid and would not get it past their own civil service). 

The least likely is suicide, of course. But the point here is that one should not jump to conclusions and that include either that Putin personally ordered the acts or that a rogue Western cell decided to trigger anti-Russian sentiment out of frustration at any one of a number of policies - Ukraine, Syria, defence spending, threats to NATO, risks to Trident . 

Unfortunately the 'evidence' has now become so politicised that nothing can be trusted any more than it could be in the Syrian or Iraqi chemical weapons cases. The Prime Minister's rapid highly politicised jump to judgement has ensured that!

 Criticising 'Highly Likely'

The truth is that all security services are mostly making it up as they go along on weak intelligence. Did any of you actually read that embarrassingly trite and poorly evidenced Trump dossier which was so embarrassing and yet came from someone who had been be a leading past MI6 analyst!? Mentioning Iraqi WMD at this point would simply be a low blow so I won't. 

'Highly likely' is just not good enough when there are so many alternative analytical possibilities and before the investigation has got very far at all. Add to this the convenience for the battered Government in frightening the population into traditional Tory patriotism and distracting it from Brexit and you see a process riddled with its own lack of intellectual integrity.

The Government is taking an uneducated population for a ride and adopting the easy way out rather than a measured and sensible review of the evidence and investigation before coming to a conclusion.

The worst of it is that, thanks to the political play by a cynical Government, if Putin is guilty and it appears to be proven, one third of the population will be minded not to believe it on the precedent of the Iraqi WMD and the untrustworthiness of our own side. The country will then be more divided than ever and the relationship between a left-wing Labour Government and the security services will be one of de facto political warfare - a very dangerous situation since no one can win that struggle. 

And if evidence emerges (and some interesting evidence is emerging) that things may be a little more complicated than we are led to believe, a third of the country will stick with their ignorant cod Cold War attitudes regardless while the bulk of the population will be confirmed in their distrust of their rulers when what we badly need is a restoration of that trust. 

So Cui Bono?

Never has trust in Government been more needed and yet this weak administration once again risks throwing what trust exists away for short term advantage. The fish rots from his head and that is now what is happening to the West. But let us close by summarising, in no particular order, the 'cui bono' candidates (since it is hard to see what Putin himself gains from such an act):-

  1. Operations involved in organised crime where revenge or dark dealings around massive funds at stake in oligarchal political warfare drive actions; 
  2. Rogue members of the Russian security apparat seeking revenge without concern or understanding for Russia's higher level national interest;
  3. Cold War Western security apparat operatives in the US and Europe seeking to damage Western-Russian relations (Ukraine is a sub-set of this category but another sub-set would be Western strategists seeking to bind Europe into NATO rather than the European Army or seek rapprochement with Russia and a further sub-set is those political warfare operatives seeking to undermine Trump's general move towards rapprochement); 
  4. The Conservative government (or more accurately the Conservative-led security state) seeking to mobilise public opinion in a 'patriotic' stance against the Left and to distract attention from Brexit (as well as ensure control over NATO-led European strategic direction); and
  5. Private revenge or insanity (whether from a rogue security operative from any apparat or within the Russian community in London).

In other words, if 'cui bono' alone is taken into account and assuming (except for e)) rational actors, there are at least four sets of actor who can reasonably be considered as more likely to be culpable than the Kremlin itself represented personally by Putin and Lavrov. And this applies equally to the murder of Litvinenko insofar as a) b) and c) and not d) and only at a stretch e) might also apply in that case and in the Berezhovsky cases. 

For balance, I would add that if it is true that the Russian security apparat is itself fully criminalised and intent on revenge or implicated in organised crime (and this has some plausibility) then, while it is less plausible perhaps that Putin was directly and personally involved in the crime, then he is responsible simply as Head of State and the wheel turns back somewhat in the direction of Prime Minister May's assessment. We simply need more evidence rather than prejudiced surmise.

The truth is we do not know and we should admit we do not know, instead of throwing around accusations and relying on prejudice and rumour, at least until the investigation has ended. The British security apparat is itself not to be wholly trusted any more than the Russian and we should never forget that. 

Last Thoughts

To be clear, just because it is 'ours' does not mean that our government's intelligence and analyses are sound or that it is not driven by ideology or not manipulable by political considerations. If there is one thing that we have learned in recent history, it is the truth of that assessment. Anything else would mean little more than a tribal belief that Arsenal must always be in the right in any penalty against Spurs. Anything else would be naive.

It is hard to see how or why such an obscure event as the murder of a treacherous agent might be more useful than some dramatic act in Syria or Ukraine if it was needed to get Putin through the last few days before the vote. Perhaps Boris has the smoking gun - in which case, we must accept it if it is the gun and it is smoking but accusations should have come after the smoking gun had appeared and not before

Although the 'mass' appears at first sight to have accepted this nonsense at face value, you can tell that doubts are creeping in already. The Twitter feeds were far more doubtful than the tabloids and that doubt began to grow after a surge of early Cold War tweets that all looked suspiciously as if they were cued to persuade us. 

Both the Spectator and Peter Hitchens then showed that a substantial 'High Tory' element thought Jeremy Corbyn got it right in asking some awkward questions - it takes a lot for Tories to do that. He was right. That does not mean he is right on other things. But he was right to ask those questions. He was not saying and we are not saying that Putin is innocent but only that assertions are not proof.

The real reasons for the killing are probably obscure oligarchal struggles or revenge for past slights which may lead back to the Russian security apparat. However, the reason for its exploitation is largely about party political advantage in the UK and an attempt to dish the advocates of the European Army in favour of NATO. All this is set in an ideologically-driven High Tory and State neurosis about Russia that seems to go back to the days of Lord Palmerston.

It is all rather ridiculous - if only because it shows how defensive and anxious a weak British Government has become. So, let us now maintain an open mind, trust no one and wait on such facts as can be presented that are more than intelligence analysts' surmise and the arrival of something in our country from a stockpile over thirty years old. 

In the meantime, let us wish a swift recovery to all three victims of this heinous political act and be prepared for the possibility that it is proven or evidenced as highly likely, instead of asserted as highly likely, that the Kremlin ordered a crime on British soil and that this should result therefore in more serious sanctions than actually offered by the Prime Minister, regardless of the interests of big business and the City of London.

Saturday 8 April 2017

Trump's Bombs - An Analysis

The question today is whether the Assad Government (the use of 'regime' is a propaganda tool otherwise we would say Trump Regime or Hollande Regime, only our enemies are 'regimes') used chemical weapons in Idlib. There are five reasonable theories:

- a) it did

- b) Assad is not in control of his forces and one of his Syrian airbase commanders undertook this action without authorisation (in which case he must still take responsibility if he does not expose and remove the commander, that is, if he can),

- c) the Syrian Air Force (as the Russians once said) accidentally struck a chemical weapons dump in rebel hands (this is plausible but we have to add the possibility that the air force deliberately bombed such a dump),

- d) a chemicals dump in rebel hands was deliberately used in a false flag operation by rebels or proxies for political reasons against its own people (unfortunately this really cannot be dismissed as a possibility given what is at stake and the ruthlessness of all parties in the struggle),

- e) chemical weapons were brought into the area by an unknown group in order to create an incident or provocation for political reasons.

The truth is that we really do not know what happened and the reasons to take d) and e) seriously without accepting them as necessarily true are these:

- i) chemical weapons stocks cannot be assumed to be solely under the control of the Syrian Government nor unavailable from a range of proxy actors in the country,

- ii) all proxy actors have shown the ability to disregard civilian life in the past when it is politically useful or deemed necessary (just as much as the Government in Damascus),

- iii) proxies and their client rebels were in a desperate political situation in relation to the US Presidency increasing the motivation for a desperate acts,

- iv) the timing was totally counter-intuitive to Syrian state interests to the extent that option a) above is almost certainly irrational: Damascus appears genuine in its anger at the turn of events (only the radically absurd notion that Damascus was testing Trump to the limit accounts for the fact unless a faction of the Syrian Air Force undertook the action to scupper the peace process),

- v) Russian protests at the claims should be treated with care but the firmness of the protest indicates genuine anger at the claims with Russia in a better position to understand the facts on the ground than the West.

There are other considerations to be taken relating to the Western side. Western intelligence has proven poor in the past. Its incoming intelligence may come from the very persons who may be motivated to undertake a 'false flag' operation. Western allied assertions have often been dictated by their unified stance towards Russia and not by the facts on the ground. Whatever the truth of the matter on the ground, conservative Republicans, European allies, pro-rebel activists (who are well funded) in Washington, and senior State Department, intelligence and Pentagon officials are all engaged in manouevres to place an unstable Presidency under control and force him into a defining interventionist line. The underlying aim is to shift his policy from a populist one to the standard line that has existed since 1945 of forward defence against Russia.

This last motivation is not to be dismissed. Trump has threatened to over turn American foreign policy priorities. In this one action, he has proven that he is not willing or able to do that when push comes to shove. Because of what is at stake, without conspiracy theory being required, these facts provide the motivation for taking d) and e) seriously. Given the long history of such operations in American and Western foreign policy, provocation must be accepted as a real possibility in the context of what has been called the American Deep State (that is, those career military and foreign policy officials with skin in the game of a particular policy line). The speed of alignment of allies indicates that this manouevre represents a major political win for the international shared position underpinning the NATO model.

This is not to say that the American Deep State engaged directly in a provocation but only that its reaction to a provocation and its own difficulties in controlling the Presidency would have made the calculations of third parties capable of a provocation ones that encouraged direct action. However, this is not to say that d) and e) are true representations of events and we do not want to go down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory with no more facts in favour of a provocation than one of deliberate state action but only to say that d) and e) are, at this point in time, no more nor less possibly true than a), b) and c). The wise and fair approach would have been either to undertake investigations in order to bring the matter before the UN or supply sufficient reliable intelligence (better than the rubbish presented to the UN in 2003) into the public domain that would incontrovertibly justify direct action that we could all support. In this regard, Jeremy Corbyn is absolutely right in his caution.

Without public access to intelligence, a reasonable suspicion has to be that Trump was guided into a machismo gesture by motives far beyond the simple direct response to a humanitarian disaster. If so, it was not even directed at Russia primarily, let alone Damascus. It was directed at halting a certain turn in American foreign policy, signalled only days before, and shifting it back in a conservative direction through the advisory intervention of an array of forces within the Washington and NATO establishment with two aims in mind - the restoration of the elimination of the Assad Leadership from the ultimate game plan for Syria (a position strongly advocated by France and Britain) and the re-assertion of a policy of contestation for territory and influence with Moscow and the final burying of any suggestion of a Washington-Moscow detente.

Again, we are not saying here that a) and b) were not possible - far from it - but only that the trajectory of events seems not to be a simple one of a proven war crime resulting in a efficacious direct response but rather one of a crime veiled in the fog of war and being used in such a way that it raises the reasonable suspicion (no more) of it being a provocation. Eliminating all chances of it being a provocation through rapid investigation (with a refusal by the Syrian Government to permit investigation being a reasonable admission of guilt) should have been prior to what amounted to an act of war. 

Postscript

Since writing this note, we have seen the publication of the important letter from Theodore A Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which casts severe doubt on the intelligence assessment on which the bombing was based and which indirectly raises questions that relate directly to the analysis above. 

It may be useful to note that Al-Nusra (or rather its successor organisation which really is just a rebranded Al-Nusra, meaning Al-Qaeda) is on the very border of the town, that it was reported as quarrelling with the other rebel groups as recently as January and that the original Al-Nusra seized one Syrian air base and besieged another before the September 2013 Chemical weapons Agreement and then captured the second after it (conditions would never have been ideal for any decommissioning). Most observers agree that some chemical weapons are in the hands of rebel groups and Al-Nusra declined to sign the 2013 Agreement. 

This is definitely not to say that Al-Nusra 'did it' (we have no evidence of that) but only to say that a lot more questions needed to be asked before lobbing missiles around and reversing policy on the say-so of analysts working for agencies with skin in the game of preserving the policies of the previous Administration. Maybe answering those questions would have led back to Damascus but it seems a lot of key questions were not being asked any more than they were in previous 'shoot from the hip' American operations. 

This is not a cowboy show on 1950s TV with men in black hats and men in white hats who can see each other clearly across the saloon, designed to entertain tired less-than-well-educated punters at the end of a tough working day ... it is complicated and it decides whether tens of thousands live or die or are maimed or made homeless. This means that a high level of intelligence analysis is required without the 'sources' (which include the 'white helmets') being given too much leeway as if they had none of that 'skin in the game' themselves.

Saturday 10 October 2015

Poor Journalism & The Art of Innuendo - A Second Personal Statement

A few days back, I made a Personal Statement about my involvement in Exaro that I had hoped would be decisive in telling the truth of the matter for those interested in the current child abuse scandal - remember that I cannot and do not speak for Exaro or for the other shareholders but only for myself. As before, this has to be a Personal Statement.

In essence, I stated that I had founded Exaro but that I had no influence whatsoever over the editorial content and that, in particular, I certainly had no say in the editorial decision to get involved in the allegations about child abuse and its alleged cover-up in the British Establishment. I expressed my continued support, however, for the investigation of allegations. One of the grounds for this was that the campaign of vilification against me, the Editor and the main shareholder in Exaro (who also has no say over editorial decision-making as a result of a decision when the Company was founded, enshrined in a shareholders' agreement) which started some months ago in the back waters of the internet appeared to demonstrate that 'Exaro was on to something'. Based on long experience (see below), this indicated that there seemed to be murky forces interested in discrediting Exaro and perhaps 'killing it off' and, in killing it off, killing off the investigations by the Metropolitan Police. I have been struck since then by the extremely robust responses of the Met to the wide campaign of denigration of the investigations that has been mounted in recent weeks. I am also keen to emphasise that not all critics of Exaro can be tarred with the same brush. There are sincere and questioning people who are right to be concerned that the investigations remain on the right side of decency and do not descend into a witch hunt - so far, I do not believe that Exaro has done this.

I came to the view that there was no point in responding to the bottom feeders in the further reaches of the internet. The opinions of people who post on forums connected to David Icke might reasonably be ignored. I referred to the fact, however, that private investigators had been used to compile a 'dossier' on me and on Exaro. Having seen that part which related to me, it was in the grand tradition of third rate research without analysis and with content riddled with opportunities for innuendo, the art of which I shall return to later. This sump of rumour and half-truths did not avoid dragging in my family but my decision stood - there was no merit in giving the oxygen of publicity to what appeared to be an extreme right wing campaign of vilification or a psychological warfare operation masquerading as such. I have no idea who initiated or was interested in undertaking this campaign. Long experience in the defence of individuals against such online campaigns of vilification have taught me that these operations are best regarded as one of the unfortunate costs of a free society - like trolls in social media. One should be bigger than this.

So far so good but the denigration has recently moved up the line on the internet in a way I should have come to expect until it has reached the point where comment has to be made or lies and half-truths will become part of the mythology of my reputation. There is no necessary connection between the innuendo of the bottom-feeders and the higher level innuendo of the more 'respectable' blogger or mainstream media - none whatsoever - but the fact of reporting or campaigning through innuendo ironically demonstrates why Exaro existed in the first place. It was created in direct reaction to experience of the worst of British journalism - the automatic publication of material provided in dossiers whether by the 'secret state' or others, the failure to give adequate background, analysis or detail on stories and the failure to check stories at source. I am not going to defend Exaro in this context - it has to defend its own conduct. If mistakes have been made (by me as by others), there should be apology but any apology should not be the cause of the destruction of a major project which may offer to uncover something of what the ESRC-funded academics in History Today this month have called the 'hidden history' of official handling of child abuse in our country.

So, do I have anything to apologise for? Absolutely not. I have made it clear that I founded Exaro - for which I have absolutely no reason to apologise - and have no, repeat no, influence over editorial decision-making. Even if the Editor was proven to be politically motivated, had lied or had engaged in fearful misconduct (none of which is the case to date), my role would be limited to agreeing with Board Members to his removal on the evidence and only on the evidence. There would be no justification for such an act if the matter was one of the editorial material being inconvenient for us personally or our business interests.

But what is the response of the media to this in my case? It is not acceptance of the facts as outlined in my clear and unequivocal blog posting but, instead, an exercise in the sort of innuendo abhorrence of which had led to the creation of Exaro in the first place. Innuendo is the natural tool of the British Press in full hunting mode because it is an art learned within the confines of English defamation law and it usefully means that not too much resource need be spent on the expensive business of fact-checking and contextualisation. There is certainly no need to defame if you can select facts and use them to suggest something that is not actually true.

There are two key items of innuendo in my case and I am not afraid to confront them directly: that because I am left-wing and radical therefore Exaro must be part of some political conspiracy; and, second, that because my company, TPPR, undertook media relations and speech writing support for Asma Al-Assad, that I am in some way a 'bad person' whose implicit evil casts a shadow over Exaro. So I am going to deal with these two items of innuendo head on.

In both cases, these items have been variously used by campaigning bloggers and, latterly, by the so-called mainstream Press. Let me be crystal clear - in no case other than one has any journalist tried to contact me personally and directly in order to verify facts or discuss the implications. I note that the common trick with colleagues is to pose apparently devastating questions (less so with close analysis) only hours before a claimed deadline in that typical game of being able to say that the target had been contacted for a comment. In my case, I hold to a simple rule. Any respectable journalist may ask me any question on my own affairs in writing and I will undertake to try - as a busy person - to give a full written response if I think it appropriate within 36 hours. The one journalist who did try to contact me did so by leaving a message on Twitter which I did not see for several days - unlike the frenetic denizens of the Westminster Bubble, I only look at Twitter once a week at most!

The first innuendo about a left-wing political conspiracy is easily handled. I simply have to point to the previous blog posting and ask a journalist to read it. It clearly states the simple truth that Exaro was created with clear rules about editorial interference. I can add that the Editor was chosen in good part because of his lack of political affiliation and none of the other Directors to my knowledge have any particular affiliation themselves. In my case, I was actually estranged from the Labour Party from around 2004/2005 until only a few weeks ago. I am more radical and more left-wing in politics than those who controlled the Party until very recently and, like many, was uncomfortable with the forward foreign policy and the lack of democracy inside the Party. It is important to note that when Exaro was founded my regard for New Labour was probably at its lowest ebb.

This brings me to two specific claims - that I am a friend of Jeremy Corbyn and that I am in any way close to Tom Watson. Maybe I will be one day but I am not now. How about some basic facts. Let us start with Mr. Corbyn. I knew Jeremy in Islington in the 1990s for the simple reason that he was my Constituency MP.  I believe my wife (I had forgotten this but can thank the private investigators for reminding us) was on a local charitable board with him. I recall, unconnected to Islington party affairs, that I brought the attention of a Tory MP to some brutalised conservative-minded South East Asian dissidents who I had been asked to assist pro bono. That Conservative picked up the house phone at the Commons saying that Jeremy was the man to deal with this and, sure enough, with his usual moral integrity, Jeremy did what he could. In 1996, I attended meetings of the Campaign Group of MPs as Co-ordinator of the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance which was trying to democratise the Labour Party but I am not sure I even recall him in the room. I recall Jeremy turned up at one of our street parties. In other words, I knew him only a little more than the equally personally likeable Tory MP, Greg Clarke, in my current home of Tunbridge Wells. After I left London in 2000 - fifteen years ago - although we are 'Facebook Friends', I recall no communication between us other than one brief note of recognition when we connected. I certainly have not seen him since the late-1990s. So to claim some conspiratorial friendship is absurd. In fact, I respect and personally like him and he is part of the reason I rejoined the Labour Party but the 'conspiracy' is no more than that and I know a lot of prominent Conservatives better than I know the Leader of my own Party.

There is even less of a connection with Tom Watson. He was (I recall) my 'opposition' during the attempt to democratise the Party in 1995/1996 before he was an MP. I am not sure I even met him at that time. I may have done in passing but my dealings tended to be with Jon Cruddas amongst the Political Officers of the Trades Unions and with the Leader's Office. I am connected on Twitter and that is that. I have come to admire him for his stand on private rights over institutional force but then I equally admire the Tories Zac Goldsmith and David Davies in that respect. His election as Deputy Leader of the Party was undoubtedly a factor in my rejoining the Party as a private citizen, a decision I do not in the least regret. So, let us be clear, there is no left-wing conspiracy behind Exaro. I am the only left-winger involved, there was no Labour Party connection to my initiation of the Project (quite the opposite) and even if I had that conspiratorial intent, there is no mechanism by which I could influence policy. In short, any claim that Exaro is a left-wing plot should be regarded as the manufactured innuendo of fevered and desperate minds and this would have been made clear to any journalist who had bothered to contact me directly.

Now let us move on to the Asma al-Assad issue. The implication is that I should be ashamed in some way of my Company acting as adviser in the early 2000s to Mrs Al-Assad. Not only am I not ashamed but I am proud of the work done by my colleague - since, in fact, I cannot take credit for her sterling work. So, in the interests of dealing with innuendo and half-truths, let me tell you what one of my companies (TPPR) does in general and why our extensive work in the Syrian context was valuable and worthwhile.

I never speak of the details of the work I do for clients because of a commitment to client confidentiality but it is reasonable to write of the types of work we have done and why we do it. TPPR was founded in the late-1990s after I removed myself from domestic politics with a specific brief to defend individuals and others from the effects of unwarranted political warfare operations and also to advise on behaviour change and best practice to ensure that there was no room for future attacks in the future. It is rather interesting and amusing in some ways to be the one under attack now but at least I am well prepared with a correct and cool response to strategies of innuendo and to dossier-based psychological warfare operations.

I certainly have no need to justify our work to the British media - a lot of it was trying to educate lazy journalists on how to fact-check and ask the right questions. Sometimes we undertook pro bono or low paid work for the 'voiceless'. We were non-partisan and we might work indirectly alongside the State Department (in one case) or alongside Arab individuals wrongly accused of terrorism. With one exception, I do not recall we ever acted directly for Governments and that exception is outlined below. The details of our work, if we were permitted to reveal them, would be an advertisement for a fine and honourable little company that was at the heart of events during the so-called 'war on terror' and became expert in countering online psychological warfare operations during a dark period where collateral reputational damage was regarded as acceptable, using a supine media and even some NGOs as 'useful idiots' in campaigns to pervert and manipulate public opinion for political purposes.

Perhaps I am particularly proud of our first project which was the defence of the personal reputation of the owner of the Al-Shifa pharmaceuticals works in Sudan whose plant was bombed out of existence (its last shift of women workers almost slaughtered in consequence) because of a classic dodgy dossier, of our work to raise awareness in the Arab World of the appalling condition of the Marsh Arabs in Iraq in the run-up to the US invasion of 2003 and the forensic uncovering of the forged evidence used to try to remove George Galloway from the political scene. We never took sides or acted as agents of influence outside the limited parameters of specific initiatives which were ethically scrutinised with considerable care and usually related to our assessment of natural justice.

Now to Syria. Our involvement in Syria extended from approximately 2001 to approximately 2005. It certainly ended as soon as the Civil War broke out. Our Syrian friends, deeply distressed, split into their respective camps and it was ethically axiomatic that TPPR could not act for any Client in a war situation. Our relationship with Syria was complex and expressed as a series of projects in which senior and significant politicians of both main Parties might be involved and which were very much associated with the attempt to assist in the internal reform of the Government through dialogue. This was the only case where, at one point, we acted directly for an overseas Government when we agreed to assist the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in acting as liaison with the Foreign Office and in managing media relations during the Presidential Visit of 2002. We broke our rule on working with Governments in part because it was clear that it was in the British national interest to have a competent cultural liaison working with the Embassy answerable to the Embassy. During that period we had an excellent relationship with our FCO counterparts who proved, as you would expect, administratively competent under conditions where Syrian administrators were definitely not used to Western media and cultural habits.

Our other involvements were less direct. We agreed to help set up the British Syrian Society [''BSS'] with a number of highly respected British-Syrian businessmen and UK politicians as a friendship society designed to assist in the reform process that was widely assumed to be under way at the time. Incidentally, we introduced democracy to the BSS with a general vote of members to elect its Chairman. We managed the media relations for Syrian Culture Week and, through the BSS, we got to know the President's father-in-law who asked us to assist his daughter with some rather anodyne speech writing and a Press Visit by the Sunday Times. We were more than happy to do this and have no regrets. The intention was to build bridges in order to assist in modernisation. In that context, we undertook some confidential work with the London Embassy attempting (unsuccessfully) to change attitudes through educating Ministry officials on the cultural expectations of Syria in the West. Our work may reasonably be regarded as an honourable failure but it gave us a deep understanding of at least one aspect of Middle Eastern affairs. We had no connection with the Syrian Media Centre which was the State-directed communications unit in London. The specialist and educated journalists in the West covering the region were a pleasure to work with and never once were they pressurised by us to write (as if we could) anything but what they saw ... the spin and manipulation by the usual suspects was another matter. I have personal views on the responsibility for the slaughter and mayhem that subsequently appeared and I remain horrified by the ambiguities of Western association with faith-based obscurantists but that is a matter of personal politics and not the official view of TPPR.

In this second lengthy piece, I hope I have managed to make clear that not only do I have no editorial influence over Exaro which is wholly managed in that respect by the Editor but that Exaro never was, is not and never will be a political conspiracy, that the innuendo about me, about my family (if that is ever used as a tactic beyond the sump of bottom-feeders) and about my work needs cross-checking rather than accepting. My historic work in a Syrian context was mainstream, honourable and something of which I am actually rather proud.

The deeper public policy issues remain. They represent precisely the reasons I founded Exaro in 2011. Exaro may prove inadequate to the task or fail but the original impetus has been proved to be more correct than ever. When it comes to a national journalism based on dossiers, innuendo, half-truths, lack of analysis, sensationalism, partisan misinformation and disinformation, then if not Exaro ... who?