How Much Else Has Been Faked?

Neil Clark writes:

Killed on Tuesday. Attending a Press Conference on Wednesday. When it comes to Lazarus-style recoveries, the ‘anti-Kremlin’ journalist Arkady Babchenko, makes even the Skripals look like also-rans. The fake murder stunt pulled by the Ukrainian authorities, has also made quite a few ‘superior’ people back home look rather stupid. 

When 'news' of Babchenko's 'assassination' came out, the west's political and media elite couldn't wait to point the finger of blame at the Russian government. The same people who screech 'conspiracy theorist' at those who claim the British government scientist David Kelly, who was found in a field in Oxfordshire with his left wrist slashed, was murdered, assured us that the FSB, acting on the orders of the Evil Putin, had struck again. Not only that, they ridiculed those who wouldn't share their surety.

'But, but Porton Down, the Russians don't do this. Western conspiracy blah, blah blah. Wake. Up. fgs just wake up' tweeted Giles Dilnot, formerly of the Daily Politics. 'Corbyn will want to see full evidence first' japed Paul 'The Original Centrist Dad'.

Yes Paul, how silly to want to see 'full evidence'. When the Ukrainian government and their neocon allies tell us something, we should all just blindly accept it! 

UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson declared that he was ‘appalled' to see another 'vocal Russian journalist murdered'. 'We must defend freedom of speech and it is vital that those responsible are held to account'. Will Bojo now be pushing for sanctions on Kiev? No, didn't think so.

A man who probably no one outside of Russia and Ukraine had ever heard before Tuesday — and who earned 'dissident' status for saying that he had 'no sympathy, no pity' for the members of the Alexandrov Ensemble Choir and others killed in a plane crash over the Black Sea on Christmas Day 2016, — was eulogised as The Greatest Journalist Who Ever Lived, whose life deserved to be commemorated in a Hollywood epic.

'A terrible crime. Arkady was a fearless and brilliant journalist, the best of his generation, committed to telling uncomfortable truths', gushed Luke Harding, author of Collusion: How Russia helped Trump win the White House. His tweet was retweeted over 600 times, including by some leading members of the Punditocracy.  'I do not know what it is if not the terrorism. There is no other word for it', wrote one person in reply. How about fakery? That fits quite nicely, I think.

Those who didn't reach for their keyboards straight away to type 'Evil fxxxxxxx murdering FSB bastards', were also lambasted. 'Ukraine assassination: How long must we wait before the usual suspects blame Mossad, MI6, the Skripals or Hilary Clinton. Or (more likely) say nothing at all? Complicit silence' tweeted the 'elderly hack and sage' Michael White.

In fact, those who kept shtum were the wise ones. When I first heard of Babchenko's 'death' my first thought was: why on earth would the Kremlin do this just a fortnight before the World Cup? Had I tweeted 'This could be fake news', I would no doubt have been condemned as a 'batshit crazy conspiracy theorist' by those who were promulgating batshit crazy conspiracy theories within minutes of the 'news' coming out from Kiev.

If you're in a whole, you should stop digging. But the anti-Russian commentariat just can't help themselves. Ok, 'Babs' wasn't killed - but it was all necessary to thwart a Russian plot to kill him. Never mind that we haven't seen any evidence of said plot. Let's keep blaming Russia!

As I wrote for Sputnik in April, we've entered the 'Through the Looking Glass World' of Lewis Carroll, where we're being asked by our politicians and 'leading commentators' to believe six impossible things before breakfast.

Only nine days ago we saw a video of Yulia Skripal, looking very well indeed after being poisoned by what we were told repeatedly was the 'deadliest nerve agent known to man'. We learnt earlier in the week that UK medics were treating the Skripals for an opioid overdose without taking any extra precautions, until UK chemical weapons experts at Porton Down 'confirmed' nerve gas poisoning.

It's worth remembering too that Arkady Babchenko is not the only 'Kremlin-critic' who has miraculously come back from the dead. The neocon 'newspaper of record', The Times, stated that Sergei Skripal had expired on its front page headline on 12th March.

Remember too that we only learnt how the Skripals were doing 'fine'- and were not in fact on death's door - after Yulia made a phone call to her cousin Viktoria from hospital, which was broadcast on Russian television on 5th April.

The faking of Babchenko's death should make us wonder what else has been fabricated in pursuance of the neocons' anti-Russian geopolitical agenda. Did a 'Russian brigade' really shoot down MH17? How can we be sure of that when Ukraine, which has a clear motive to incriminate Russia, is part of the Joint Investigating Team - and the Ukrainian special services have provided much of the 'evidence'?

The question we should all be asking this weekend, and which in fact has been asked by OffGuardian columnist Catte, is: 'What if Babchenko had decided to stay 'dead?' 'If he hadn't turned up alive, Arkady dead would have become the thing most people called ‘truth'….. No one- none of us- would think to question it. And anyone who did would be dismissed as a lunatic', Catte writes.

If Babchenko had stayed dead, then British neocons - the real lunatics in our midst - would be demanding fresh 'punishment' against Russia. There would have been renewed calls for Ofcom and/or the government to ‘take action' against Russian media operating lawfully in Britain, such as RT and Sputnik.

Would any mainstream politician or journalist have dared to speak out against the Russophobes? In an age where scepticism of official narratives is shamefully equated to treason, one very much doubts it. But outside of the gates of the Bastille, the people are fooled no more.

Ladies First

If Theresa May wants more women on boards, then she should introduce the workers' representation that she promised.

The alternative is what in Scandinavia are called "golden skirts". Those women sit in boardrooms, and usually in several of them. But they certainly do not speak for women who clean them.

Time For Some Steel

Anyone who still believes that the Government is making any attempt to pursue Brexit need look no further than today's news, announced to The Sun rather than to the House of Commons, that David Davis is pretending to be in search of a way for Northern Ireland to remain both in the United Kingdom and in the European Union. That is, other than the United Kingdom's remaining in the European Union. Of course.

In other news, the trade war. No, of course we were never going to be given a preferential trade deal with Donald Trump's or anyone else's America merely because we spoke variations on the same language and, oh, something that some public school Anglophile from Peru had read in some eighteenth-century book of which no one else had ever heard.

Theresa May is determined to stay in the Customs Union, even if officially it has to be called something else, just as there are still those sad old souls who talk about "the Spare Room Subsidy" or "the Community Charge". Jeremy Corbyn is stuck with MPs who would mostly have been deselected if the last Parliament had run its full course. They believe in the Customs Union (and in the Single Market) in the same way that they believe in unpaid internships.

The Customs Union, which keeps out food and other produce from the developing world while precluding trade agreements with the BRICS and other countries, is in fact the "free trade area" for which those who voted Yes in 1975 imagine that they were solely voting. The Single Market, meanwhile, was of course created by Margaret Thatcher. They have both been thoroughly pernicious from the start.

There needs to be someone in Parliament who is as opposed as ever to the EU, and who opposes Trump having also opposed Clinton, Bush, Obama, and the other Clinton, against whom, had she come here as President, demonstrations ought to have been just as large and vocal as they are going to be against Trump. Where better for that MP than the constituency in which the largest town is Consett?

Four amendments need to be tabled, and put to the vote on the floor of the House of Commons. To secure the extra £350 million per week for the National Health Service. To restore the United Kingdom's historic fishing rights of 200 miles or to the median line, in accordance with international law. To seek a trade agreement with each of the BRICS countries while remaining thoroughly critical of all five of their current Governments. And to seek the integration into the Belt and Road Initiative of all four parts of the United Kingdom, of all nine English regions, and of all of the British Overseas Territories and the Crown Dependencies.

If any of these is your view, then I need £10,000 in order to stand for Parliament with any chance of winning. My crowdfunding page has been taken down without my knowledge or consent. But you can still email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com instead, and that address accepts PayPal. If, however, you would rather have the sitting MP for North West Durham, then do not pretend to hold any of those views. This is a test of credibility.

The Bonus Element

Prem Sikka writes:

Despite some occasional noises from shareholders, fat-cattery continues unabated. All wealth is generated by the collective efforts of all stakeholders, but executives continue to run away with disproportionate share.

The chief executives of FTSE 100 companies collected an average pay of £3.45m last year, which is around 120 times the average pay of full-time UK workers.

The chief executive of the Lloyds Banking Group collected £6.42m in 2017, a 10.9% increase from £5.78m in 2016. This is almost 100 times the average pay at former bailed-out bank. 

People can’t afford to get on the housing ladder, but don’t worry, the chief executive of Balfour Beatty is doing very well. He picked-up £5.4m for the year to December 2017, compared to £1.5m in the year before. 

You really have to feel sorry for WPP’s former chief executive whose remuneration plunged to £13.9m, compared to £70.4m in 2016 and £48.1m in 2016. How is the poor chap going to manage? He certainly won’t be going to any food-bank or worry about paying his rent or mortgage

BT slashed 13,000 jobs but its chief executive picked-up £2.3m, including a £1.3m performance bonus.

There is no relationship between the long-term performance of companies and executive pay. Directors of some of poorest managed companies, such as Carillion, collected mega pay packets. 

Despite failed products, the chief executive of Circassia, a pharmaceutical company, collected £825,000 in 2017, around 80% increase on 2016 pay.

Directors say that they deserve more because they increased sales, investment, profits customer base, or some other measure. Isn’t this part of their job anyway? So why the bonus?

Besides, the targets can only be met by the collective efforts of everyone. But the incentive schemes available to executives are not extended to employees.

Effective reform should empower employees, customers and other stakeholders to vote on basic executive pay. Bosses won’t get approval from employees unless workers get a fairer proportion of the wealth they have generated with their brain and brawn.

Customers at gas, water, electricity, phone, train, banks and other companies have been ripped-off for far too long and won’t reward executives responsible for giving them a raw deal.

And if bonuses are offered to executives, the same should be available to all employees. After all, no executive can turn in superior performance by himself or herself.

The bonus element of executive pay, if any, should only relate to extraordinary performance. It should be subjected to additional scrutiny as too many incentive schemes are too easily contrived.

Approval from 90% of stakeholders, including employees, customers and shareholder, should be required on bosses’ bonuses. Directors themselves should not be permitted to vote on their own remuneration packages. 

The government’s previous reforms have done little to check fat-cattery. Business secretary Greg Clark said earlier this year that listed companies would have to reveal the pay ratio between bosses and workers, in new legislation to be drafted “before the summer recess”. 

And if 20% of shareholders objected to executive pay package then the names of the executive would be published. 

Unlike at AstraZeneca, where despite 37% of the shareholders voting against executive remuneration, the chief executive still collected £9.4m.

But the naming and shaming will not be published on a government website. Instead, a register will be set up by the Investment Association – a trade body representing UK investment managers.

These toothless reforms don’t give stakeholders any enforcement rights and would hardly worry executives seasoned in advancing their self-interest.

To induce constraint, government can introduce an extra income tax band for high incomes. It can also impose a limit on the tax deductibility of total executive remuneration whether in cash, share options, shares, benefits or other forms of rewards. 

Plus, an upper limit of 10-20 times of the median pay in the company should be fixed. Executive remuneration exceeding that should not count as a tax deductible expense. 

This means that there is no statutory limit on the amounts that can be paid to executives but the after-tax cost to companies of the mega executive pay packets will be much higher.

There are already a variety of costs either fully or partially disallowable for tax purposes. These include costs relating to entertainment, buildings, company cars and others. So it is a matter of extending that list.

It really shouldn’t be too hard a job for Mr Clark and his team to figure out.

What If Babchenko Had Decided To Stay “Dead”?

Catte writes:

There’s a good deal of discussion, both in mainstream and in alt media, of how/why the Arkady Babchenko event unfolded in the ludicrous way it has.

The Ukrainian government narrative is (currently) claiming the SBU faked AB’s death in order to entrap some real (Russian) assassins who really wanted him dead, and it was all part of a cunning plan. They’re light on detail about exactly how taking pics of Bab pretending to be dead helped with the general effort, but maybe they’ll fill in all those blanks soon. 

Others, including RFE, are telling us the very bad fake death pic was released on a Facebook page with ties to Washington. But beyond the Byzantine imbroglio, I think there’s another question no one is asking. – What if Arkady hadn’t turned up, looking sheepish at that presser?

What if he hadn’t turned up ever? What if he’d decided he couldn’t face the humiliation, or what if his SBU handlers decided it might be better if he just continued to be dead and skipped off the map somewhere with a few hundred grand and nice new ID. What then?

We need to never forget that while Arkady was busy hiding in his closet (or whatever he did for the hours he was supposed to be dead), his demise was the reality for all of us. Sold to us, not just with narrative consistency, but with apparent hard evidence and circumstantial confirmation.

There was the blood-soaked “corpse” photo:

There was the sketch of the perp:

There was the Twitter parade of blue-tick public mourners.

A very very familiar roll-out we have all seen many times was taking shape. There were predictable articles, by predictable people, saying predictable things.

By next month Luke Harding would have had a new book out called something like “Death in Broad Daylight: how the Kremlin silenced Arkady Babchenko.” Its cover would feature Babchenko’s completely fake murder pic with a target superimposed and a semi-opaque red halftone background of Putin’s face. It would be on the NYT bestseller list for the next two years and make Luke another little fortune.

There would soon be an “Arkady Babchenko” street in Washington. A “posthumous” Pulitzer would have been his within a year or two. Arkady Babchenko memorial plaques would spawn like tribbles. Navalny and his twenty-seven supporters would carry those tragically misty and sepia pics of our boy (which miraculously appeared within hours of his “death”) on all their “rallies”.

By 2019 Katherine Bigelow would have made the movie (based on Luke’s book), and it would be a dead cert at the 2020 Oscars.

But it would have been no more true than it is now, would it? It would simply be an undiscovered lie. A mesh of words, woven thick by repetition, giving shape to an absence – of evidence, of investigation, of everything.

If he hadn’t turned up alive, Arkady dead would have become the thing most people called “truth.” Like “United 93”, and similar collective myths, the legend of his martyrdom would have taken on all the trappings of solid reality.

No one – none of us – would think to question it. And anyone who did would be dismissed as a lunatic.

The most important and abiding point about the non-death of Arkady Babchenko, beyond all the spin and damage control and narrative-boosting we are inevitably going to see over the next days and weeks, is that, at its deepest level, consensual reality is a fragile thing that can very easily have nothing to do with truth or fact or actual reality.

The point is that the people who are paid to fact check official narratives didn’t do it, and would never have done it. They were simply sold a line and bought it, uninterrogated, uninvestigated, unwrapped.

And this is what they do every day. With every item of “news” they lay before us.

Look at the illusion of depth and veracity they gave this lie, simply by reporting it. See how easily they were fooled and went on to fool us. See how little it occurred to any of us, even those who make a habit of interrogating narratives, to ask whether or not it really happened.

Think about how easily that basic question was trampled and crushed into oblivion. How effortlessly a few public statements and a very very questionable pic became the collective “truth” for all of us.

Look at how the debate was already being positioned. How the issue was going to be “who did it?” not “was it even done?”

The real problem this highlights is not just that the derogation of journalistic duty to fact-check and second-source is now the norm. We already know this. It’s been too apparent for too long. The real problem is that this derogation helps to create the reality we all live in. Even those of us who deplore it.

If for whatever reason Arkady had sloped off to Hawaii in a bad wig, today we would all be debating who may have killed him. Unwittingly hostage to a flimsy lie.

This is an uncomfortable truth we need to recognise. Because it’s often the questions that seem most unnecessary, absurd, offensive, even insane that actually most need to be asked.

We are already being dissuaded from learning this most valuable lesson. The journos who were so recently burned are already backstopping against it.

They aren’t focusing on why the lie happened, they are focusing on how “the enemy” (the Russians, the alt-media, the whole evil circus of “other”) are “exploiting” it. How they will now have an “excuse” to suggest any future such deaths might also be fake.

The drive is to make it ridiculous to learn from experience or to cite precedence. We are already being persuaded only idiots would think future deaths might be fake based on the fact past deaths were fake.

No matter how much data there might be for fakery we must never accept it as a legitimate possibility. No matter how many Doumas may happen, no matter how many Babchenkos come back from the dead, no matter how many incidents of fakery are outed, or “explained” in unsatisfactory terms, we must never learn from experience.

We can discuss why the victims of the latest atrocity died, but not the possibility they might not have died at all? Is this really good enough? I don’t think so.

Next time we are flooded with the apparently shocking narrative of violent death, how many of us will be brave or crazy enough to dare to ask – “did this death even happen?”?

Trial Date Watch: Day 37

More than seven weeks after I had again been due to stand trial, I now no longer have a trial date, even though it is rightly a criminal offence to fail to attend one's trial.

Had I been tried, as expected, on 6th December, then, even had I been convicted, I would already have been released, since I would by now have served three months even of a wildly improbable six month sentence.

The legal persecution of me, which has been going on for over a year, was initiated only in order to deter me from seeking public office or to prevent my election to it, and its continuation is only to one or both of those ends. Amnesty International is on the case.

Until there is anything to add to it, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

Libel Watch: Day 92

The Leader of Durham County Council, Simon Henig, was so afraid that I was going to be elected to that authority, that he faked a death threat against himself and dozens of other Councillors.

Despite the complete lack of evidence, that matter is still being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of the attempt by the sacked Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, to secure a Labour seat in one or other House of Parliament.

If I am wrong, then let Henig and Saunders sue me. Until they do, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.