Russian to Judgement 453

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The same people who assured you that Saddam Hussein had WMD’s now assure you Russian “novochok” nerve agents are being wielded by Vladimir Putin to attack people on British soil. As with the Iraqi WMD dossier, it is essential to comb the evidence very finely. A vital missing word from Theresa May’s statement yesterday was “only”. She did not state that the nerve agent used was manufactured ONLY by Russia. She rather stated this group of nerve agents had been “developed by” Russia. Antibiotics were first developed by a Scotsman, but that is not evidence that all antibiotics are today administered by Scots.

The “novochok” group of nerve agents – a very loose term simply for a collection of new nerve agents the Soviet Union were developing fifty years ago – will almost certainly have been analysed and reproduced by Porton Down. That is entirely what Porton Down is there for. It used to make chemical and biological weapons as weapons, and today it still does make them in small quantities in order to research defences and antidotes. After the fall of the Soviet Union Russian chemists made a lot of information available on these nerve agents. And one country which has always manufactured very similar persistent nerve agents is Israel. This Foreign Policy magazine (a very establishment US publication) article on Israel‘s chemical and biological weapon capability is very interesting indeed. I will return to Israel later in this article.

Incidentally, novachok is not a specific substance but a class of new nerve agents. Sources agree they were designed to be persistent, and of an order of magnitude stronger than sarin or VX. That is rather hard to square with the fact that thankfully nobody has died and those possibly in contact just have to wash their clothes.

From Putin’s point of view, to assassinate Skripal now seems to have very little motivation. If the Russians have waited eight years to do this, they could have waited until after their World Cup. The Russians have never killed a swapped spy before. Just as diplomats, British and otherwise, are the most ardent upholders of the principle of diplomatic immunity, so security service personnel everywhere are the least likely to wish to destroy a system which can be a key aspect of their own personal security; quite literally spy swaps are their “Get Out of Jail Free” card. You don’t undermine that system – probably terminally – without very good reason.

It is worth noting that the “wicked” Russians gave Skripal a far lighter jail sentence than an American equivalent would have received. If a member of US Military Intelligence had sold, for cash to the Russians, the names of hundreds of US agents and officers operating abroad, the Americans would at the very least jail the person for life, and I strongly suspect would execute them. Skripal just received a jail sentence of 18 years, which is hard to square with the narrative of implacable vindictiveness against him. If the Russians had wanted to make an example, that was the time.

It is much more probable that the reason for this assassination attempt refers to something recent or current, than to spying twenty years ago. Were I the British police, I would inquire very closely into Orbis Intelligence.

There is no doubt that Skripal was feeding secrets to MI6 at the time that Christopher Steele was an MI6 officer in Moscow, and at the the time that Pablo Miller, another member of Orbis Intelligence, was also an MI6 officer in Russia and directly recruiting agents. It is widely reported on the web and in US media that it was Miller who first recruited Skripal. My own ex-MI6 sources tell me that is not quite true as Skripal was “walk-in”, but that Miller certainly was involved in running Skripal for a while. Sadly Pablo Miller’s LinkedIn profile has recently been deleted, but it is again widely alleged on the web that it showed him as a consultant for Orbis Intelligence and a consultant to the FCO and – wait for it – with an address in Salisbury. If anyone can recover that Linkedin entry do get in touch, though British Government agencies will have been active in the internet scrubbing.

It was of course Christopher Steele and Orbis Intelligence who produced for the Clinton camp the sensationalist dossier on Trump links with Russia – including the story of Trump paying to be urinated on by Russian prostitutes – that is a key part of the “Russiagate” affair gripping the US political classes. The extraordinary thing about this is that the Orbis dossier is obvious nonsense which anybody with a professional background can completely demolish, as I did here. Steele’s motive was, like Skripal’s in selling his secrets, cash pure and simple. Steele is a charlatan who knocked up a series of allegations that are either wildly improbable, or would need a high level source access he could not possibly get in today’s Russia, or both. He told the Democrats what they wish to hear and his audience – who had and still have no motivation to look at it critically – paid him highly for it.

I do not know for certain that Pablo Miller helped knock together the Steele dossier on Trump, but it seems very probable given he also served for MI6 in Russia and was working for Orbis. And it seems to me even more probable that Sergei Skripal contributed to the Orbis Intelligence dossier on Trump. Steele and Miller cannot go into Russia and run sources any more, and never would have had access as good as their dossier claims, even in their MI6 days. The dossier was knocked up for huge wodges of cash from whatever they could cobble together. Who better to lend a little corroborative verisimilitude in these circumstances than their old source Skripal?

Skripal was at hand in the UK, and allegedly even close to Miller in Salisbury. He could add in the proper acronym for a Russian committee here or the name of a Russian official there, to make it seem like Steele was providing hard intelligence. Indeed, Skripal’s outdated knowledge might explain some of the dossier’s more glaring errors.

But the problem with double agents like Skripal, who give intelligence for money, is that they can easily become triple agents and you never know when a better offer is going to come along. When Steele produced his dodgy dossier, he had no idea it would ever become so prominent and subject to so much scrutiny. Steele is fortunate in that the US Establishment is strongly motivated not to scrutinise his work closely as their one aim is to “get” Trump. But with the stakes very high, having a very loose cannon as one of the dossier’s authors might be most inconvenient both for Orbis and for the Clinton camp.

If I was the police, I would look closely at Orbis Intelligence.

To return to Israel. Israel has the nerve agents. Israel has Mossad which is extremely skilled at foreign assassinations. Theresa May claimed Russian propensity to assassinate abroad as a specific reason to believe Russia did it. Well Mossad has an even greater propensity to assassinate abroad. And while I am struggling to see a Russian motive for damaging its own international reputation so grieviously, Israel has a clear motivation for damaging the Russian reputation so grieviously. Russian action in Syria has undermined the Israeli position in Syria and Lebanon in a fundamental way, and Israel has every motive for damaging Russia’s international position by an attack aiming to leave the blame on Russia.

Both the Orbis and Israeli theories are speculations. But they are no more a speculation, and no more a conspiracy theory, than the idea that Vladimir Putin secretly sent agents to Salisbury to attack Skripal with a secret nerve agent. I can see absolutely no reason to believe that is a more valid speculation than the others at this point.

I am alarmed by the security, spying and armaments industries’ frenetic efforts to stoke Russophobia and heat up the new cold war. I am especially alarmed at the stream of cold war warrior “experts” dominating the news cycles. I write as someone who believes that agents of the Russian state did assassinate Litvinenko, and that the Russian security services carried out at least some of the apartment bombings that provided the pretext for the brutal assault on Chechnya. I believe the Russian occupation of Crimea and parts of Georgia is illegal. On the other hand, in Syria Russia has saved the Middle East from domination by a new wave of US and Saudi sponsored extreme jihadists.

The naive view of the world as “goodies” and “baddies”, with our own ruling class as the good guys, is for the birds. I witnessed personally in Uzbekistan the willingness of the UK and US security services to accept and validate intelligence they knew to be false in order to pursue their policy objectives. We should be extremely sceptical of their current anti-Russian narrative. There are many possible suspects in this attack.

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453 thoughts on “Russian to Judgement”

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  • Geoffrey de Galles

    Just something akin to a footnote:- Sure seems to me that we the public need to hear the tape of the 999 call (and of any other ones immediately following) that first alerted the Salisbury emergency services to the medical drama going down on that park bench. For conceivably the perpetrator/s was/were among the very first, in accordance with his/their own sinister interest/s, to alert the police & the ambulance services. When you’ve staged an event, you can’t wait to see it break — as in ‘breaking news’.

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    For once, Trump is right not to be rushing to judgement, but he is doing so because of his contrariness, not because of any belief or judgment.

    • AS

      He seems to be a mixture of volatile and easily manipulated. A short attention span, impatience, a consequent over-valorisation of his own ‘instinct’ or ‘intuition’ that allows prejudices and ignorance (absence of knowledge or understanding) to fill in the gaps, plus a de-emotionalized parental education that makes him simultaneously cold and needy. All easy to diagnose and difficult to predict.

  • Dumb Unicorn

    Apologies if anyone else has already commented on this, but I couldn’t help but notice that the BBC commentary quietly mentioned that one of the sanctions which might be considered by the UK government is to ban RT.

    I don’t for a minute think that RT is not biased towards Russian interests, but I think people take that into account when they watch or read RT. They are one of the few larger media outlets which give a different point of view from the mainstream US/UK channels and from what I understand, their reporting is fairly honest compared to other outlets (Russian stories excepted).

    With Saudi Arabia trying to shut down Al Jazeera because of spurious claims about Qatar supporting terrorism, it seems like there is a concerted effort from the usual suspects* to shut down any media outlet which doesn’t comply with their world view.

    *the usual suspects being the unholy trinity of US/Saudi Arabia/Israel – and their supporting cast.

    • Ian Stewart

      BBC Breakfast news this morning allowed Dominic Raaf to go on at some length (unchallenged by the ineffectual Louise) about the financial sanctions the UK could introduce such as freezing assets and bank accounts of Russians. Bank accounts he stated were probably funded by criminal income (State and personal) as London gave these “launderings” a veneer of respectability. Yet the ineffectual Government mouthpiece Louise didn’t take the opportunity to use the door opened by Raaf to ask if the Chancellor was correct to refuse to refund the £880,000 apparently donated to the Tory party by Russian oligarchs. The very oligarchs Raaf says are using London to deposit their ill gotten gains. If thats dirty money then so is the cash given to the Tories and it should be the first action May and her shower should take as not to is so hypocritical it beggars belief.

      • Sharp Ears

        Louise Minchin. A stooge.

        Dominic Raab, another stooge.

        From his register of interests –

        From 1 January 2017 to 12 June 2017, a member of the Advisory Board of Reliance ACSN Limited, a UK cyber security firm. Address: 132 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 9SA. I was paid £30,000 per year in quarterly instalments to offer strategic advice, and engage with industry wide groups about issues and standards affecting the sector. Hours: up to 144 hours (or 18 days) per year. I consulted ACoBA about this appointment. (Registered 20 December 2016; updated 13 June 2017)

        That was until Theresa gave him a job. ?

        The rest of it is mainly fees for scribbling stuff for the MSM, some considerable.

        He won £15k from Associated Newspapers in a libel case.

  • Casey

    An argument could be made that an op like this, presumably using Mossad as the intermediary, merely serves to highlight the impotent rage of the Anglo-Israelis at having been outplayed in Syria. I suppose it could be part of a larger scale effort to build up war-lust in the public. And maybe the op predated Putin’s new weapons systems reveal, which makes this kind of operation seem even more pathetic and desperate than it might otherwise look. To me, the only argument that make sense is that the Anglo-Israelis had a plan to pursue a first-strike nuclear attack and this was part of the ongoing drumbeat of pre-war propaganda.

    • Salthegal

      Cutting and pasting the URL, just now, worked for me. Might not work for long, of course…

    • John Goss

      And now the reply button does work. See my comment at March 13, 2018 at 18:36.

      It probably depends on the site to which you are sharing it. That’s is why I sent it to a group of which I am the admin. As the admin I have in the past had to deal with posts that other members of the group mark as Spam and suggest this is what has happened here. You casn always ask the Admin of the group to see if someone marked it as spam.

  • Tony_0pmoc

    This story has reeked on an anti-Russian propaganda event right from the very start. For 24 hours the story published was Fetanyl poisoning, which made no sense as the Hazmet teams and photographers had been deployed, the previous evening. Is it true, that the daughter was air-lifted to hospital, whilst the spy went by road ambulance? Why? At that stage, all she had apparently done was puked up, whilst he was waving at the sky. I would imagine that most such poisons are very fast at producing such reactions, certainly in less than 30 mins. Then the story came out that it was probably administered at home, before they walked into town, had a meal at a restaurant, and then sauntered over to a pub, and then sat on a town bench. All of this would likely have taken well over 2 hours. The girl may well have been slipped something in her drink in the pub, to make her ill. He may have been given the same treatment. However, I find it highly unlikely, that what was given, was a very powerful chemical weapon. That would be completely unnecessary, and very much overkill, it does however make for exceedingly powerful anti-Russian propaganda.

    The connections then revealed, and discovered about links to Christopher Steele, and the anti-Trump, DNC, CIA et al cabal, posed another very interesting aspect to a fascinating who-dunnit story, whilst the army was brought in, and the story went completely OTT, producing a very dramatic media show. I suspect, that the UK Government, didn’t have a clue what was going on, and probably still don’t.

    Its the Security Services/Deep State running the show, much as they do in The USA, to Trump’s apparent disgust.

    Then maybe Trump found out. Obviously he couldn’t say, as it would make his artificially manufactured pro-Russian, pro-Putin position look almost credible.

    However what he did do immediately after Tillerson said this “Moscow “Clearly” Behind Skripal Poisoning, “Will Trigger A Response”, was to fire him. Of course it may be a co-incidence, and he would have fired him anyway for calling him a Moron. That is not being very polite to your Boss, especially if he is The President of The USA, even if its true (which I somehow doubt).

    So far as I am aware, no one has died, and I suspect no one will in reality (though in the published story they may) – we don’t yet know, because the movie is still on-going. I suspect in the credits published sometime in the future (assuming we don’t have WWIII), there will be the statement “no animals, or humans were harmed in the making of this propaganda”

    That would make sense, as there is no point in killing people, merely for propaganda purposes, when the same effect can be achieved, by giving them lots of money, and maybe a brand new home, in the Lake District close to Windscale / Sellafield, where the views are great, no one will recognise them, and they will feel at home. They would probably prefer Windermere actually, as there are a few nice pubs there, and they have lots of tourists from Russia and Japan.

    Maybe they have already moved there. No one is going to be allowed to see them are they?

    http://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/visiting/placestogo/explorewindermere

    Tony

  • Shakesvshav

    Talking about Uzbekistan, Moon of Alabama quotes:

    “One of the key manufacturing sites was the Soviet State Scientific Research Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology (GosNIIOKhT) in Nukus, Uzbekistan. Small, experimental batches of the weapons may have been tested on the nearby Ustyurt plateau. It may also have been tested in a research centre in Krasnoarmeysk near Moscow. Since its independence in 1991, Uzbekistan has been working with the government of the United States to dismantle and decontaminate the sites where the Novichok agents and other chemical weapons were tested and developed.”

    The full article is at: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/03/theresa-mays-45-minutes-claim.html#more

    • Tony_0pmoc

      mike,

      Of course I read Robert Parry for years, but had never come across this barrister before. His analysis is excellent, “James O’Neill is a Barrister at Law and geopolitical analyst.”

      Thank You,

      Tony

      Extract

      “My admittedly speculative hypothesis (but I would argue, not an unreasonable one) is that Skripal was likely involved in the production of the Steele dossier. He was therefore in a position to offer potentially very damaging information into the circumstances of the Steele dossier. As noted above, that particular narrative has not only spectacularly collapsed, but the revelations reflect very badly on, among others, the U.S. intelligence community, the FBI, the Democratic National Committee, the Obama White House and the Clinton campaign.

      In any major criminal enquiry one of the basic questions the investigation asks is: who had the means, the motive and the opportunity? Framed in that light, the Russians come a distant fourth behind the other prime suspects; the U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies themselves, and those elements of the deep state that sought to prevent Trump winning, and subsequently to undermine his presidency. The primary motive being ascribed to the Russians is revenge for Skripal’s treachery more than a decade ago.

      A second major question asked in any criminal investigation is cui bono – who benefits? It is difficult to perceive a credible argument that Russia is a beneficiary of Skripal’s poisoning.

      Further support for the hypothesis that this was a false flag operation comes in this statement that British Prime Minister to Theresa May made to the UK Parliament. The statement was frankly absurd and could only have been made when the intention was to further demonize and punish Russia, rather than any attempt to establish the truth and apply ordinary principles of evidence and factual analysis.

      May’s argument is thoroughly deconstructed on the Moon of Alabama website, which pointed out that Russia had destroyed all left over stocks from the Soviet Union’s chemical weapon program and does not currently produce chemical weapons. Further, there are any number of governments capable of carrying out the Salisbury attack. “If someone is run-over by a BMW is it ‘highly likely’ that the German government is responsible for it?” the Moon of Alabama asks.

      The obfuscations of the British reinforce in the view that Skripal was dangerous to the anti-Trump forces and the authorities therefore sought to have them removed. There is ample precedent for such actions and those familiar with the “suicide” of Dr. David Kelly will recognize the parallels.

      The chances of the truth emerging have become vanishingly small at the same time as a serious conflict with Russia becomes correspondingly greater.”

    • MJ

      Don’t be such an idiot. Israel has a track record of carrying out this kind of nonsense. In the absence of further evidence it is perfectly sensible to include it in any list of usual suspects.It would be daft not to.

      • glenn_nl

        You think carrying out assassinations is funny? Or are you pretending that Israel doesn’t undertake such criminal acts?

    • nevermind

      So is the deliberate incarceration, killing and injuring of children, Yitzhak, a Zionist spread mental illness that is so deranged that it does not recognise international law, rules or regulations, setting itself above all other deranged.
      Has Mr. Netanyahu been arrested yet? Or will he be able to start a war of diversion, boasting his land/resource stealing image by a few hectares more?

    • joel

      Tbf, if you believe all criticism of Israel is informed by racism then you’re in no position to be calling other people idiots.

    • Zoltan Jorovic

      I don’t think any kind of prejudice or racism is a mental illness. By claiming it is a mental illness, you are equating mentally ill people with racists. If I suffer from depression, or schizophrenia, that is a misfortune and no fault of mine. I am not responsible for my condition. Are you saying that people who hate a group of people – in this case, Jews – are not responsible for this hatred? It’s just something that happens to them over which they have no control? Or are you saying that mentally ill people are all in some way at fault for their illness and should be castigated for it? Whichever, it is difficult to see either as an acceptable view. Using mental illness as a derogatory term or a pejorative label is a kind of discrimination just as unpleasant and despicable as any other.

  • nevermind

    Again one farce after the next, Alexander Boris de Pelfer Johnson is quoting Macron and Gabriel being in support saying that Rex Tillerson was also fully behind the UK’s actions.
    Then he was sacked shortly after and Trump demanded to be heard by Mrs. May… Now we have to listen to Johnson drawing comparison to WW2 as I’m writing it, the man needs sacking too.

    • Martinned

      …and Merkel, who has traditionally advocated a more moderate approach to EU-Russian relations…

      https://www.bundesregierung.de/Content/DE/Pressemitteilungen/BPA/2018/03/2018-03-13-telefonat-merkel-may.html

      Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel und Premierministerin Theresa May haben heute am Telefon über den Giftstoffanschlag von Salisbury gesprochen. Die Bundeskanzlerin verurteilte diesen Anschlag auf das Schärfste und versicherte, sie nehme die Einschätzung der britischen Regierung zur Frage einer russischen Verantwortung für den Anschlag außerordentlich ernst. Es sei an Russland, rasche Antworten auf die berechtigten Fragen der britischen Regierung zu geben und der Aufforderung nach vollständiger und umgehender Offenlegung des einschlägigen Chemiewaffenprogramms gegenüber der Organisation für das Verbot chemischer Waffen (OVCW) zu folgen.

      Die Bundeskanzlerin und Premierministerin May haben vereinbart, in engem Austausch zu bleiben und sich gemeinsam in geeigneter Weise mit den Verbündeten und europäischen Partnern zu beraten.

  • nevermind

    When I tried earlier, at about 2 pm, to share this article, the page went dark and it disappeared. I had to post it myself and share it. It probably has been disappeared by now, but the number of hits here should be improving, unless Google fiddles with that as well.

  • Jonathan Sless

    I totally agree. Unless one believes Putin has lost the plot it seems unlikely that letting off nerve agent in Salisbury was high on his to do list.

  • N_

    “Theresa May claimed Russian propensity to assassinate abroad as a specific reason to believe Russia did it.”

    What is she on about with that one? Some say she may try to run with it at the UN, but that seems unlikely since there’s no way the UNSC would reach a conclusion on a proposed British resolution against Russia without running an independent inquiry (Britain and Russia almost certainly wouldn’t be able to vote), “propensity” to do such jobs doesn’t mean they did this one, and as you rightly say, Israel has a greater propensity. So why did she cite this as a reason?

    I’m struggling to see a Kremlin motivation for the Salisbury job too, at least over and above the obvious damage it has done to MI6.

    Unless war is viewed as inevitable.

    Estonia is alleging that a Russian military plane violated its airspace yesterday. (RFE-RL, TASS) Guess where the plane was going. That’s right, Kaliningrad.

    Britgov is looking absolutely pathetic by threatening a cyberattack. They are looking like utter beginners at psychological warfare. It doesn’t make sense to threaten a cyberattack. You just do it! The PW stage of WW3 has already begun. It’s totally normal for PW to begin before the physical conflict and continue after it.

    Also I wish people would get the idea of “cold war” out of their heads. The cold war between the west and the Warsaw Pact ended in the 1960s. Reagan upped some pressure in the 1980s after the Zionists wrecked detente (Jackson-Vanik amendment) but that wasn’t a new cold war. Look at the figures for ICBMs and nuclear payloads in the late 1950s and early 1960s to find out what a real “cold war” looks like. This isn’t a cold war. There won’t be a “cold war” in the Facebook epoch. “Hybrid war” is another idiotic term, one which incidentally is never used in Russian military doctrine and doesn’t appear in Gerasimov.

    Then there are the British defence cuts…shelved pending a new report. All right for some!

    I suspect that from some (not highly influential) people’s POV this is like the Falklands – an attempt to shore up a Tory government and also make some dosh not just out of contracts but also out of what the idiots think will be a limited brushfire war. The problem is, this won’t be a limited brushfire war.

  • N_

    As well as yesterday’s air event with Estonia, something has happened in London too… A Russian has been found dead, this time a “close friend” of British-protected mafia killer, the late Boris Bereovsky:

    “Russian exile Nikolai Glushkov found dead at his London home”

    The Torygraph call him him a “Putin enemy”.

    No doubt as an “exile” he’s in the same category as Dostoyevsky or Sakharov, right? Will the Tories ever take their tongues out of mafia bosses’ arses?

    • N_

      Glushkov was found dead yesterday in his home in Clarence Avenue, New Malden.
      New Malden…any North Korean connection, I wonder?

    • Tony_0pmoc

      N_Boris Bereovsky was one hell of a lot more powerful, than I ever realised. I cannot remember where I read it, but it was effectively him, who got Yelstin appointed. He then allowed Putin to sneak in. Putin is only a little man, and he thought he would be easy to control. He definitely got that one wrong, well from his point of view, as Bereovsky is now dead. He might have been exceedingly rich, but didn’t manage to take it with him.

      “Will the Tories ever take their tongues out of mafia bosses’ arses?”

      Dunno. Maybe they like the taste, judging by their performance.

      Tony

  • Graham Evans

    Very interesting, I think that Russia is always the first port of call and very handy for May in her precarious position in the cabinet. Almost a Thatcher Falklands moment.

  • Republicofscotland

    “Ex-MI5 agent Annie Machon has dismissed the PM’s claims that the origin of the nerve agent used to attack former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal is indicative of an attack from the Kremlin. ”

    Yes it’s on RT, but she’s a ex-MI5 agent, who’ll know the ropes to some extent.

    https://www.rt.com/uk/421158-russia-spy-mi5-machon/

        • Martinned

          If Wikipedia says so, it must be true. But seriously, someone who left the service more than 10 years ago is hardly in a position to know more than you or I.

          • John Goss

            The nerve agent allegedly used is more than ten years old. In fact it is from the Soviet era. I am pretty sure Martinned Annie Machon knows quite a lot about procedures which have clearly not changed for decades with Porton down using this old stock. They clearly have no idea what the state of the art is in Russia Today.

          • Republicofscotland

            I didn’t claim that you said they should be punished.

            I said you disliked whistleblowers of a certain disposition, such Julian Assange.

          • Martinned

            No, not whistleblowers of a certain disposition, just Julian Assange specifically. That has no bearing on my views regarding his legal difficulties, though.

    • Republicofscotland

      N.

      Did you know that you can watch RT in the HoC? Yesterday during the anti-Russian tirade, that was passed off as a debate lead by the PM.

      One MP stood up and railed that why was RT allowed in the House. I wonder if the BBC or Sky news is pumped into the Russian White House or the State Duma?

      • N_

        Yes, I saw that. Really funny. Since the HoC controls its own building, it can only be because some of the MPs want to watch it. That MP made it sound as though it was something the Russian bear did to them.

  • Velofello

    The entire event was filmed in Pinewood Studios, England, a British B movie, in technicolour, or at least that is how it appears to me.

    And advice received looks like the smart thing to do from now onwards is to carry a packet of baby wipes at all times as defence against a nerve gas attack.

    Who was responsible? I have no proof, so reverting to probabilities, I cannot identify any gain for Russia. I can accept that tagging responsibility onto Russia may(May!) have possible diversionary gains for some – discredit the footy World Cup in Russia? Now that would be a loss eh?
    To try and dilute public support for Russia’s military assistance to Syria? Do the public here in the UK care about Syria? or Yemen? Or Iraq? Or Libya? Nah,World Cup footy, definitely.

    And then we have Brexit, the less the public are made aware, the better?

    Carry On Lying, commissioned by Westminster,produced at Pinewood Studios.

      • Tony_0pmoc

        No, the photography would have been a lot better.

        The moon landings were an American production.

        “2001: A Space Odyssey was financed and distributed by American studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but it was filmed and edited almost entirely in England, where Kubrick lived, using the facilities of MGM-British Studios and Shepperton Studios.”

  • Chris Salt

    The British Government (BBC) is loosing the overall news agenda due to a lack of credibility & its appalling history of lies – they will use this one (false flag) to stop the growing RT/Sputnik audience – watch this unfold & what can we do against this level of establishment noise?

    • N_

      I noticed Theresa May kept saying Russian “state” and UK “government”. Doesn’t Britain have a state? They don’t really want to go there, because then you immediately get the question what’s the difference between the state and the government. And they don’t want people referring to the BBC as “state TV and radio”, or calling judges etc. part of the state. I sometimes call the BBC “GosTelekom” 🙂

      It’s an interesting area because some who are steeped in Tory culture hate the BBC because they associate it with the “left wing” idea that the “general public” are something other than knuckle-dragging heathens whose opinions aren’t worth listening to; who breed like rabbits; who probably have sex with their pets; and who are suitable only for being put in a pit and shot whenever there’s no demand for their labour or buy-to-let houses they can pay the rent on. On the other hand, these hate-filled Tory scum would never go so far as to use the totally accurate term “state TV”.

      • John Goss

        N_

        It’s probably better to keep it as “state” and “government”. Russia has statesmen and women. We have governors. 🙂

      • John A

        Well the idiotic and barking mad Nikki Halley actually called the Russian government, the Russian regime at the UN recently. The Russian representative politely asked her to use the correct term!

  • N_

    Ooh, @Martinmed, you sarky sod! 🙂 Perhaps if you weren’t so sarcastic, you could tell the difference between reflecting on different possibilities and rushing to believe “everything except” what to you is “obvious”, which presumably means whatever first came into your head. Actually I think it’s likely that the Russian government was behind Salisbury. But I have an open mind. While the action has damaged MI6, I don’t think that is sufficient motive. There remains a lot to think about. There are obvious motives for Britgov too. Only a matter of several days ago, there was talk of the government not surviving a vote on the customs union. The Tory leadership has many friends among Russian mafia “businessmen” (“oligarchs”) and who knows, someone might have asked a favour. The problem with that is that the mafia is not exactly separate from the ~KGB (just trust me; it isn’t), so that might have been too big a favour to be granted. Also the defence cuts which were going to be quite substantial got shelved pending a new inquiry. Some are pushing to increase the defence budget by as much as 50%, from 2% to 3%.

    Wait a minute, never mind any of that…you’ve mentioned the moon landings. Keep making your sarky one-liners… Got any about tinfoil?

  • John Goss

    As a point of interest are Sergei Skripal and his daughter dead? I ask because time and again I hear commentators on MSM referring to them in the past tense. It happened again this afternoon when a Sky reporter said words to the effect that “His daughter, Yulia, lived in Moscow and he lived in Salisbury.” I’ve heard similar past tense statements over the last three days.

    Anybody else noticed?

  • JW10

    A light in the Darkness.
    Thank you very much, Craig.
    I always respected you and your opinion.
    Katta rahmat.

  • J

    All of these hasty ‘idiot plots’ have long ago run out of ‘willing suspension of disbelief.’ A government and agencies can’t fictionalise proceedings after that point, no matter how inventive. They should have stopped after their handiwork before the GE. They obviously don’t know how.

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