On 8 July 2018 a lady named Kirsty Eccles asked what, in its enormous ramifications, historians may one day see as the most important Freedom of Information request ever made. The rest of this post requires extremely close and careful reading, and some thought, for you to understand that claim.

Dear British Broadcasting Corporation,

1: Why did BBC Newsnight correspondent Mark Urban keep secret from the licence payers that he had been having meetings with Sergei Skripal only last summer.

2: When did the BBC know this?

3: Please provide me with copies of all correspondence between yourselves and Mark Urban on the subject of Sergei Skripal.

Yours faithfully,

Kirsty Eccles

Israel lobby financier Adam Milstein has been identified as the funder of Canary Mission, the anonymous website that aims to tarnish the reputations of US supporters of Palestinian rights.

Milstein is named as the financier of Canary Mission by Eric Gallagher, a former employee of The Israel Project, in Al Jazeera's censored investigative film, The Lobby - USA.

The Electronic Intifada is releasing segments it has obtained of the film: one shows Gallagher telling an undercover Al Jazeera reporter about Milstein's role and the other shows Milstein talking about the need to "investigate" and "expose" critics of Israel, who Milstein believes are not only anti-Semites, but also "anti-Christian" and "anti-freedom" activists who "terrorize us."

The film also reveals that Israel lobby operatives who rely on information provided by Canary Mission "coordinate" their activities with the Israeli government.

In the previous piece, I began to focus on the official timeline of events on March 4th, as stated by The Metropolitan Police on 17th March, noting that there is a missing 4 hours in the morning, which investigators were very anxious to receive information on at the time, but which they have been conspicuously silent on since. Not only have they failed to update the timeline with information about the Skripals' movements on the morning of 4th March, but they have failed to do so despite now having that information. How can I be sure they have it? Because both Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been awake and talking for months now.

But in this piece, I want to focus on something even more important. Something that is crucial for two reasons:

1. Firstly, the Metropolitan Police do not mention it in their timeline, even though it absolutely did happen and is vital.
2. Secondly, it completely demolishes the theory that the Skripals were poisoned by touching a nerve agent on the handle of Mr Skripal's front door.

The incident in question is the duck feed. But before I come on to it, let's just remind ourselves of the official timeline once more, so that we can then see where this incident fits in:

Saturday 3rd March

• 14.40hrs on Saturday 3 March: Yulia arrives at Heathrow Airport on a flight from Russia.

Sunday 4th March

• 09.15hrs on Sunday, 4 March: Sergei's car is seen in the area of London Road, Churchill Way North and Wilton Road.
• 13.30hrs: Sergei's car is seen being driven down Devizes Road, towards the town centre.
• 13:40hrs: Sergei and Yulia arrive in Sainsbury's upper level car park at the Maltings. At some time after this, they go to the Bishops Mill Pub in the town centre.
• 14.20hrs: They dine at Zizzi Restaurant.
• 15:35hrs: They leave Zizzi Restaurant.
• 16.15hrs: Emergency services receive a report from a member of the public and police arrive at the scene within minutes, where they find Sergei and Yulia extremely ill on a park bench near the restaurant.

One of the things that is immediately obvious about this timeline is its astonishing vagueness in certain places. For instance, Mr Skripal's car was apparently seen in three different areas - London Road, Churchill Way North and Wilton Road - at 9:15. Presumably it was seen on CCTV cameras in these locations, and presumably these cameras all have time and date stamps. In which case, why could the timeline not be more precise than suggesting that Mr Skripal's car was at three locations at the same time?

Earlier, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard's navy chief Alireza Tangsiri said that Iran has full control of the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.

Saudi Arabia's energy adviser said that if Iran closes the Straight of Hurmuz, the UN Security Council is likely to authorize military action.

He added that Iran is unable to completely, or partially, close the Straits of Hormuz or Bab al-Mandab.


According to him, the current sanctions are unlikely to stop Iranian exports completely.

Iran has earlier threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off the main oil shipping route, in response to any hostile actions from the US.

US President Donald Trump appears to have caved in to bipartisan demands to pay respects to late Sen. John McCain until he is laid to rest and ordered flags to fly at half-staff and delegating senior officials to the funeral.

In a statement released late Monday, Trump announced he ordered the re-lowering of the flags that were up again on Monday after being lowered for Saturday, the day of McCain's death, and Sunday.

"Despite our differences on policy and politics, I respect Senator John McCain's service to our country and, in his honor, have signed a proclamation to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff until the day of his interment," the statement reads.

US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have called for international efforts to prevent the humanitarian crisis in the Syrian northwestern province of Idlib, the White House said on Tuesday.

"The President spoke with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany this morning to discuss a range of issues of mutual interest, including crisis resolution in Syria... Both leaders called for international actions to prevent humanitarian crisis in Idlib province," the statement read.


Trump and Merkel also discussed the economic relations between the United States and the European Union, which have been recently troubled by the US tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, according to the statement.

The United States is currently waging economic warfare against one tenth of the world's countries with cumulative population of nearly 2 billion people and combined gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $15 trillion.

These include Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, North Korea and others on which Washington has imposed sanctions over the years, but also countries like China, Pakistan and Turkey which are not under full sanctions but rather targets of other punitive economic measures.

In addition, thousands of individuals from scores of countries are included in the Treasury Department's list of Specially Designated Nationals who are effectively blocked from the U.S.-dominated global financial system. Many of those designated are either part of or closely linked to their countries' leadership...

But in recent months it seems that America's unwavering commitment to fight all of the world's scourges has brought all those governments and the wealthy individuals who support them to a critical mass, joining forces to create a parallel financial system which would be out of reach of America's long arm. Should they succeed, the impact on America's global posture would be transformational.

- From the recent article: The Anti-Dollar Awakening Could Be Ruder and Sooner Than Most Economists Predict

The peak of American empire has already come and gone, a reality not yet widely appreciated due to the continued dominance of the global financial system by the U.S. dollar, still the world's preeminent reserve currency. U.S. leaders have always used the USD as a weapon, but it's only in recent years that geopolitical rivals and long-standing allies alike have started to come to an increasingly vocal understanding that the unipolar role played by the U.S. in the world's centralized financial system is well past its expiration date.

Whilst the issue of Britain leaving the EU has dominated our media for the last two years, a close runner-up has been much of the media claiming the Labour Party has a major problem with anti-Semitism.

Last week an opinion poll found that whilst 36 percent of Brits think there is a problem with anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, 38 percent disagree, leaving 26 percent undecided.

In nearly 50 years as a Labour Party member I never saw a Labour MP raise a single issue of anti-Semitism until two and a half years ago when the left-wing candidate for the youth seat on Labour's National Executive Committee was accused of being linked to anti-Semitism. Weeks later an independent report revealed there was no such problem, but the smears led to the defeat of the candidate.

The headline in the UK newspaper the Daily Mail on August 7 encapsulated much that is paranoid in sad modern Britain. It read "Russian warships pass through English Channel as Putin's armed forces ratchet up pressure on the Royal Navy."

Certainly, the United Kingdom is in a state of crisis; but it isn't because of any sort of military threat. The vote to leave the European Union was a major slide down the greasy pole of decline and Time magazine summed up the debacle by pointing out that "At heart of this political saga is the fact that the politicians leading the Brexit "Leave" campaign - Boris Johnson chief among them - never actually explained to the British public what a vote for 'Leave' entailed. The promise of Brexit was all things to all people, which is how it managed its 52- to 48-percent victory over the 'Remain' side. Then prime minister David Cameron resigned, and it fell to his successor Theresa May to figure out what Brexit actually means."

The Brexit pantomime is taking place in an era in which it is recorded that "As benefits are cut and rents soar, Britain has seen a staggering rise in homelessness: the number of rough sleepers in England alone has more than doubled since 2010. Almost 1.2 million older people in Britain, as well as another one million disabled people, are living without the social care they need for basics such as eating, dressing and washing. It's horrific: severely ill people forced to wait 14 hours to go to the toilet or wheelchair users who, with no assistant to help them cook, are now malnourished."

Long forgotten in Western mainstream media, Libya has suddenly come back into headlines as a small civil war is erupting within areas under control of the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli.

Scores of people have been killed and wounded amidst intensifying clashes in the Libyan capital as rival factions vie for control of the city.

Notably, the clashes have involved the shelling of residential areas in southern sections of Tripoli, street-to-street fighting, and tanks in the streets, reminiscent of the 2011 war which eventually led to a NATO air campaign and forcible removal and assassination of Libya's longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Al-Jazeera reports Monday's escalating violence which began over the weekend, and which has resulted in a declared state of emergency being throughout the capital:

At least four people have been killed and seven others wounded in clashes that broke out between rival armed groups in Libya's capital, Tripoli, as they attempt to take control of the city.

The health ministry declared a state of emergency on Monday, according to local media, after the Sunday evening clashes continued to escalate.

The fighting erupted between local militias and al-Kani tribal fighters from Tarhouna, southeast of Tripoli, who are sending reinforcements to the country's north.